INGERSOLL, BEECHER 

AND 

DOGMA, 

OR 

A FEW SIMPLE TRUTHS 

AND THEIR LOGICAL DEDUCTIONS, 



IN WHICH THE POSITIONS OF 



MR. INGERSOLL AND MR. BEECHER 



ARE CONSIDERED IN TWO LECTURES. 



ENTITLED 



MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS 



THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 




CHICAGO: 




S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 

1878. 



f 






COPYKISHT, 1878, 

By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 



a; 



^-M^ 



KIIISHT a LS2MARD 



AUTHOR'S PREFATORY REMARKS. 



The wonders of the kaleidoscope are but the reflec- 
tions of numerous pieces of colored glass, rough, without 
symmetry, unsightly in themselves, having no connection 
with each other, and but very trifling value. If we take 
these little pieces out of the case that is artfully arranged 
for them, and examine them, each upon its own individu- 
al merits, or collectively as a whole, we shall be surprised 
that any art could have succeeded in causing us to think 
them of beauty or of value. The author well remem- 
bers the feeling when, a child, he solved the mystery of 
his first kaleidoscope. He felt that he had been imposed 
upon — deceived into believing that what he saw was at 
least the shadow of something real and beautiful, when in 
truth it was only a delusion; and he has been skeptical of 
appearances ever since. And so, when Mr. IngersoU put 
his bits of painted words, bits of highly-colored thoughts, 
and bits of Infidel philosophy, and a great variety of 
nondescript bits and broken fragments of all kinds, into 
his kaleidoscopic lecture of "The Gods," and placed it 
on sale in almost all the shops of the land, the author se- 
cured a copy, and true to his early lesson, set about solv- 
ing its mysteries. In the lecture, " Mephisto-Minotaurus," 
will be found the result of his investigation. 

What Mr. IngersoU has put together in the work referred 
to is, no doubt, to many minds, of very questionable value, 
unless some of it be classed with the antiquities, and with 



4 AUTHOR'S PREFATORT REMARKS. 

this part the market is already glutted ; but when he puts it 
between the polished glasses of his wit, his satire and his 
eloquence, and whirls it round with magic swiftness, there 
is to one's eyes, bewildered by his art, a wonderful and 
entrancing vision. 

In reviewing Mr. Beecher's philosophy, the author has 
not confined himself so exclusively to the text. He has 
sought rather to consider what appeared to him the irrec- 
oncilable dogmas of many of our religious societies, and 
in the treatment of this subject he has sought to be gov- 
erned solely by the merits of the ideas themselves, without 
attaching any importance to the sources from which they 
may have emanated. In the lecture entitled "The Abso- 
lute Necessities," will be found the offering he brings to 
the altar of thought, trusting that at least some incense 
will arise from it to join the " pillar of cloud by day and 
the pillar of fire by night," which shall lead us on in 
the march of soul to the Infinite. 

The author expressly desires to be understood that in 
the title of his work he intends no disrespect to either of 
the illustrious names with which he adorns it, and trusts 
that neither Mr. Ingersoll nor Mr. Beecher will feel com- 
promised by being associated together. 

R. S. Dement. 
Chicago, March, 1878. 



MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS. 



The conflict of faith and unbelief remains the proper, the 
only, the deepest theme of the hfstory of the v/orld and man- 
kind, to which all others are subordinate. 

Goethe. 

With the vulgar and the learned, Names have great weight; 

the wise use a writ of inquiry into their legitimacy when they 

are advanced as authorities. 

Zimmerman. 

For 'tis the sport to have the engineer 

Hoist with his own petar. 

Shakspeare. 



MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS; 



Every age has produced remarkable men. 
Occasional ages have shown us men who were 
truly great. It has seldom been the case, how- 
ever, that a man was correctly measured by 
the age in which he lived. Indeed, it has not 
always been the case that men have been 
rightly judged by sttbsequent ages. And how 
seldom have been the instances where the 
career of a man has been foretold to any de- 
gree of accuracy ! And how very seldom that 
a master has succeeded to that prophetic art 
which has produced an accurate portrait of a 
man who was yet to be born ! Indeed I know 
of but one such instance. It stands out in re- 

* It is not intended to reflect upon Mr. Ingersoll personally in 
anything that is offered in these pages. It is only so far as he is 
identified with his theories, by his manner of putting them, that 
we allude to him, here, as a sort of personation of his philosophy. 



8 MBPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

lief, solitary and alone. I desire to speak of 
it. It is, really, quite remarkable. 

The portrait to which I refer may be found 
in an essay, written half a century ago, by an 
eminent and distinguished author. I will show 
it you, only reserving the name of the hero. 
The likeness will at once be recoo^nized. Here 
it is : 

"Our hero is a cultivated personage, and 
acquainted with the modern sciences ; sneers 
at witchcraft and the black art, even while em- 
ploying them as heartily as any m_ember of the 
French Institute ; for he is a philosophe, and 
doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even 
his own existence. 

" It is not without cunning effort that all this 
is managed ; but managed in a considerable 
degree, it is ; for a world is opened to us which, 
we might almost say, we feel to be at once true 
and not true. . . . Doubtless our hero has 
the manners of a gentleman ; he knows the 
world ; nothing can exceed the easy tact with 
which he manages himself; his wit and sar- 
casm are unlimited ; the cool, heartfelt con- 



CARLTLE'S ESS AT. 9 

tempt with wJiIch he despises all things, human 
and divine, might make the fortune of half a 
dozen fellows about town. . . . He is some- 
times called the Denier, and this truly is his 
name ; for as Voltaire did with historical doubt, 
so does he with all moral appearances — settles 
them with a N'en croyez iHeji, 

" The shrewd, all-informed intellect he has, 
is an attorney intellect ; it can contradict but 
it cannot affirm. With lynx vision he descries 
at a glance the ridiculous, the unsuitable, the 
bad ; but for the solemn, the noble, the worthy, 
he is blind. 

"Thus does he go along, qualifying, confut- 
ing, despising ; on all hands detecting the false, 
but without force to bring forth, or even to 
discern, any glimpse of the true. 

"■ Poor fellow ; what truth should there be 
for him .^ To see falsehood is his only truth ; 
falsehood and evil are the rule ; truth and 
good, the exception which confirms it. He 
can believe in nothing but his own self-conceit 
and in the indestructible baseness, folly, and 
hypocrisy of men. ... At humanity he 



I o MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

has no grudge ; he merely operates by way of 
experiment, to pass the time scientifically. 

** Such a combination of logical Life and 
moral Death, so universal a Denier, both in 
heart and head, is undoubtedly a child of Dark- 
ness, an emissary of the Primeval Nothing ; 
and coming forward, as he does, like a person 
of breeding, and without any flavor of brim- 
stone, may stand here, in his merely spiritual 
deformity, at once potent, dangerous and con- 
temptible." 

This is an extract from an essay by Thomas 
Carlyle, contributed to the Foreign Review, in 
1828. It had, at the time, a world-wide fame 
as a pen-portrait of Mephistopheles. Indeed, 
Mr. Carlyle humored this interpretation him- 
self; it served as a mask for his hero. A mad 
rogue for a jest was Carlyle in those days, and 
how cleverly did he play this one on his critics 
and reviewers ; and how capitally did he con- 
ceal his design! How he must have chuckled 
and laughed to himself as he realized that in 
less than half a century the true hero of his 
portraiture should be recognized ! When his 



IN BRACKETS. II 

** picture of Mephistopheles " should be -x^- 
garded in its true light as a prophetic vision 
of Ingersollism. 

This much as an introduction, merely, to the 
first half of our heading — the Mephisto. 

A word or two only will be necessary as an 
introduction to the second part — the Mino- 
taurus. It will be found eminently fitting 
when brought in direct application to the 
hero of this paper. 

Now, the Minotaur of the Grecians was the 
result of a liaison, the history of which is fa- 
miliar to readers. Our Ingersoll is the result 
of a liaison between what he is, himself, pleased 
to name, respectively, " Reason " and " Philos- 
ophy." 

[It may be as well, right here, to borrow a 
brace of Dr. Holmes' brackets, and drop in an 
item in reference to a peculiarity of our hero 
as contradistinguished from his fellow Ameri- 
cans, and from those with whom he has sought 
fellowship, his cousins-german. 

The distinction is a marked one, for while 
with the former, titles such as "Hon." etc., 



I 2 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

and with the latter, those of " Von," etc., are 
seldom if ever gmitted, our Ingersoll, invari- 
ably, when mentioning the names of his illus- 
trious parentage referred to (Reason and Phi- 
losophy), omits a prefix which belongs to both 
alike, and applies directly to both with as pos- 
itive significance. I refer to the little Greek 
word Pseudo. 

Since Mr. Ingersoll has omitted to mention 
so important an ear-mark of his progenitors, 
and in order that we may not become confused 
in tracing the descent of species, it will, per- 
haps, be well to take a cue from Mr. Darwin, 
and compound a word to suit the emergency ; 
and since our hero presumes to the ermine 
of his class, what more appropriate title than 
His Pseudolency .f^ This will avoid the neces- 
sity of frequent references to his great origi- 
nals. False Reason and False Philosophy.] 

With this understanding we will proceed. 
Now, the analogy before us becomes all the 
more striking when we realize that the result 
of the liaison in the one instance was the pro- 
duction of as great a monstrosity as in the 



THE MINOTAUR. 



13 



Other, for His Pseudolency is, surely, as Mino- 
taurian a specimen of humanity as our ancient 
Grecian brethren, with all the wealth of their 
fertile imaginations, could have possibly con- 
ceived of. Unlike the iconoclasts of a more 
refined order, he disdains the hammer of argu- 
ment, but plunges in among the idols of 
antiquity, and, with a bellowing and roaring 
that all but. shakes the foundations of Olym- 
pus, more than an ocean's breadth away, gores 
and smashes things indiscriminately. 

In more direct reference to our analogue 
we will now proceed to consider his works, 
with a touch at the life and character of our 
hero, wherein the further aptitude of our 
nomeit oine7i will, no doubt, appear. 

Of course Mr. Ingersoll, the citizen, and 
Mr. Ingersoll, the philosopher, are two very 
different persons. We make no allusion to 
citizen Ingersoll. He may be a very esti- 
mable friend and gentleman for aught I 
know. It is with Mr. Ingersoll, the Pseudo- 
philosopher, that we have to do. 

We will open his book. 



1 4 MEP HIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

"THE GODS 
"and other lectures, 

''BY 

"■ Robert G. Ingersoll. 

" Give me the storm and tempest of thought 

" and action, rather than the dead calm 

, " of ignorance and faith. Banish me 

" from Eden when you will ; but 

" first let me eat of the 

" tree of Knowledge. 

" Peoria, Illinois : 

"1874." 

Let us begin with the very title-page. To 
the first of the two sentences with which this 
page is ornamented, I have simply to say : 
Bravo ! Give me the storm and tempest of 
thought and action, rather than the dead 
calm of ignorance and faith. 

But in passing to the second, one is convulsed 
with laughter! The idea of His Pseudolency, 
Mephisto-Minotaurus, running about loose in 
Eden, refusing to be put out until he shall 
first be permitted to breakfast from the tree 



MEPHISTO IN EDEN. I 5 

of Knowledge, is too much for one's midriff 
The figure employed would not be quite so 
bad were it not for His Pseudolency's dual 
character. Now, were he simply Mephisto, he 
might set up a sort of claim to a temporary 
lien on the aforesaid garden, by virtue of a 
former title of occupancy vested in an early 
and somewhat illustrious member of the Me- 
phistophelian family. But it is highly prob- 
able that his Snakeship has already taken the 
double nature of his immediate heir into ac- 
count and made other provision for him — pos- 
sibly, somewhere near Tartarus, down below 
Avernus, and so even the shadow of title re- 
ferred to fades from our vision. But to think 
of his roaring and bellowing and pawing 
through that beautiful garden, throwing up a 
great cloud of dust to blind us from his true 
purpose, is altogether too funny to be endur- 
able. 

Turning a leaf, we find the " preface," which 
we discover to be an illustrated one ; and per- 
haps there never was a preface that so com- 
pletely represented what was to follow it as 



1 6 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

this. It is at the same time a sort of frontis- 
piece, representing at the top of the page three 
crosses, on two of which are suspended human 
forms as in crucifixion, and at the foot of the 
third cross, which stands between the other 
two, are a number of women and children being 
burned as heretics. Beneath this remarkable 
conception are the words : 

" For the Love of God." 
At the bottom of the page there is a repre- 
sentation of three telegraph poles, resembling 
somewhat the three crosses, with wires 
stretched from each to each, and at the 
bottom of this picture are the words : 
" For the Use of Man." 
Now, in justice to His Pseudolency, the 
author of this remarkable cartoon (I take 
for granted that the author of the book is the 
author of its preface in this instance), it 
should be stated that he is not really so stupid, 
— for he is a man of rare genius and acknowl- 
edged ability — as to put an estimate upon it 
above the most transparent and inconceivably 
ridiculous clap-trap. He appreciates that it 



A REMARKABLE ''PREFACED I 7 

Is no more than this, quite as well as you or I. 
We must not lose sight of what Mr. Carlyle 
said of him before he was born, in the essay 
we have quoted: " At humanity he has no 
grudge ; he merely operates by way of experi- 
ment, to pass the time scientifically." 

No doubt, were he to express himself 
frankly in regard to this cartoon, he would 
admit, for he is very candid at times, that 
cartoons, as a rule, are low, very low, in fact. 
That should such a master as Nast under- 
take a job upon him and the disciples of 
" Reason " he could cartoon them beyond all 
endurance. 

Take the history of Infidelity in France, 
for instance, where they ran so wild after 
" Reason " and " Liberty " that they positively 
paraded a common courtesan at the head of 
one of their grandest processions, and hailed 
her as the " Goddess of Reason." 

Or right here In the United States of Amer- 
ica, where thousands pin their souls to Mr. 
Ingersoll's coat-tails, — just imagine a whole 
herd of souls tied on as Nast could tie them 



I 8 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

as a sort of caudal appendage to His Pseu- 
dolency, Mephisto-Minotaurus ! 

And Mr. Ingersoll appreciates as well as 
anybody else that the only possible point in 
the picture, that might otherwise indirectly 
seem to favor his side of the question, is lost 
in the fact that the telegraph is pre-eminently 
a Christian institution, and is indebted to 
Christianity and to Christian enlightenment 
for every stage of its continually advancing 
improvement. 

He ought to be capable of appreciating 
another fact : that neither the genius nor the 
spirit of Christianity is responsible for the 
crimes that have been perpetrated under the 
banner of the Cross. 

Still less is it an argument against Chris- 
tianity that wicked men have stolen her liv- 
ery to cloak their infamy, or that misguided 
zealots, in her name, have done such deeds as 
have all earth and heaven turned thought-sick 
and all hell amazed. 

Why did not Mr. Ingersoll append to his 
picture the representation of a steamboat. 



THE PLUMED KNIGHT. 1 9 

railroad, telescope, spectroscope, telephone, 
church, college, or indeed any of the advance 
couriers of Christian enlightenment, and claim 
them for Infidelity, as well as the telegraph? 
O, plumed knight of the brazen cheek ! verily 
thou hast almost compromised thyself right 
in the beginning ! 

We come now to the first of the remarkable 
lectures of this remarkable book. 

The Gods. 
" An honest God is the noblest zvoi^k of man!' 
By the little line in italics, ''A7i holiest God- 
is the noblest work of man]' it is presumed 
that His Pseudolency simply intended a little 
witticism, or pun, as it were — merely ex- 
perimenting, you know — for the intensity of 
thought, the tension of nerve and brain, the 
heavy labor, so to speak, of His Pseudo- 
lency, that is evident throughout the lecture 
that follows to prove that the most damnable 
and ridiculous of all work that humanity can 
engage in is that of making gods, precludes 
the possibility that he could have attached 
any meaning to the little line in italics. 



2 O MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

Following this is the lecture proper — and 
of all the anomalies of English literature it 
is surely the most remarkable ! Walt Whit- 
man's " Leaves of Grass " is nowhere in com- 
parison. 

Where to commence or how to commence 
a review is puzzling. If there were any de- 
fined line of argument — any firstlys, second- 
l3^s and thirdlys, the mile-posts of the old 
school — any landmarks, so to speak, of any 
kind — but so far from there being any defined 
line of argument, there is no argument at all. 
His Pseudolency has no argument to make ; 
he is simply a Denier, without argument ; this 
is the Mephisto part of him. 

His pace cannot be measured, for he has 
neither regular gait, nor does he move in any 
prescribed direction — ^he simply plunges, now 
forward, now backward, now to either side — 
pawing and bellowing and raising a wonderful 
dust all the while ; this is the Minotaur part of 
him. 

The only practical way that I can discern 
is to follow wherever there is a dust. 



A WONDERFUL DUST. 2 1 

Mr. Ingersoll opens his lecture by stating 
that " Each nation has created a God." 

This, I take it, was intended as a sort of 
poetic expression intended to convey the idea 
that all nations have had some sort of natural, 
instinctive or intuitional conception of an au- 
thority or power beyond their own — an over- 
ruling Deity. It either means this or it means 
nothing, and in the light of this interpretation 
I most heartily indorse it. 

Mr. Ingersoll might, however, have been 
less obscure and more forcible by carrying the 
thought into all the existencies of the universe. 

He could have begun with the vegetable 
world wherein he would have found : 

Fh'st, Everything dependent upon a su- 
perior power. 

Second, All things acting as if, seemingly, 
consciotis of that superior power. 

He would have found the First evinced in 
every state of development. He would have 
found the Second evinced in the progress of 
that development. 

To be plainer : Had he gone to the ivy that 



2 2 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

decks the tree In the forest, he had found 
its deHcate tendrils reaching out for help and 
support to the bark and the twigs of its pow- 
erful friend ; had he tried to unclasp Its tiny 
arms, he had found them clinging to their 
stately protector with the tenacity of life Itself, 
Then had he stooped to the fern or the flower 
at his feet, he had found them as seemingly 
conscious of their dependence upon the Earth, 
and resisting with all their puny strength his 
efforts to tear them from her bosom. Then, 
could he have listened to the voices of these, 
the soft wave of sound that attends the unfold- 
ing of the tiniest germ, he had heard a sweet 
song, as of thankfulness, a song that rises up 
from each infinitesimal stage of life, in the pro 
gress of its development. And he had found 
all these, the stately oak, the tendriled ivy, 
the delicate fern, and the fragrant flower, all 
reaching their arms to the sun — the Divinity 
of matter. 

Then had he eone to the orders of ani- 
mal life, he had found the same fact of de- 
pendence. He had found every living thing, 



A THOUGHT FROM NATURE. 23 

from the dawn of its beinor on to the end of its 
latest breath, imbued with the instinct or in- 
tuition of a Superior Power — a power beyond 
itself The young that looks to the mother, 
the mother that looks to the sire, the sire that 
looks to its nobler brother in the species above 
it, and this brother to one still above it, on 
till the hiorhest and noblest of animals that 
stands in awe of the child ; and the child looks 
up to the humblest man, and this man to the 
man who is great, and he to the Divinity of 
men. 

And then, had he lifted his face to the 
stars, he might have learned that those innu- 
merable systems of worlds revolve round their 
central suns, and that all these are dependent 
on law. And in these he would have found a 
design, and the design dependent upon a de- 
signer, and that that designer was the Divinity 
of worlds. 

And then, had he opened the book of 
thought, he could have found a volume of 
Unities, and this would have taught him that 
the divinity 'of matter, and the divinity of 



2 4 MEPHIS TO- MI NO TA UR US. 

men, and the divinity of worlds, were one — 
the trinity of perfection ; He whom the Chris- 
tians call God. 

And then he would, no doubt, have made 
his opening sentence more accurate, by saying: 
" Each nation has created an image of God." 
And then, instead of his second sentence read- 
ing as it does : "And the god has always re- 
sembled his creators," he would have made it 
read as follows : " And that image of God has 
conformed to the conceptions of its creators," 
I say he would have done this ; of course this 
is upon the hypothesis that he is an honest 
man ; I accord to all men honesty. 

Had he then have permitted a commendable 
zeal for the truth, he would have added : " This 
fact of dependence which we find throughout 
the material world, and this instinct of a S7c- 
perior power which we find throughout all 
orders of animals, and this i^itiiition of a God 
which we find throughout all conditions of hu- 
manity and all the ages of the world, — these 
three absolute truths are a very conclusive 
argument that there is One on whom all things 



FACT, INSTINCT, INTUITION. 25 

depend, a power beyond all animal life, a God 
who touches every soul through this intuitional 
link of Himself." 

After the two sentences we have given, the 
first twelve pages appear to be devoted to an 
irregular dissertation on the gods of history. 
It is here that the Minotaur part takes entire 
control. He roars and bellows, and charges 
in among the idols of the past with all the 
fury of the most illustrious sires of his species. 
And yet he is altogether harmless, in these 
paroxysms, save to himself. The objects of * 
his rage being simply myths, he charges 
through these in a cloud of dust — to his own 
exhaustion. Meeting no opposition save here 
and there from the rocks of truth that lie in 
his way, over these he but stumbles and falls 
to rise again in redoubled fury, foaming and 
roarinof and lashino^ his sides for another at- 
tack. And so he returns again and again to 
his fight with the gods. He is safer, it would 
appear, from personal harm than was poor old 
Don Quixote, in his attack upon the wind- 
mills ; and yet it may be but for a time, for, 



2 6 ME PHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

we are told, ''though the mills of the gods 
grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small," 
and if they do nothing else, they may still 
keep their spectral shadows dancing before 
His Pseudolency on the heights of Olympus 
till he shall butt his brains out at its base. 

But in the name of reason, philosophy, com- 
mon sense and uncommon sense, what has all 
this tirade of abuse, heaped upon the myths 
of the benighted ages of the past, to do 
with the negations of the Infidels of to-day? 
Wherein does all this historical slush and 
cheap wit affect the philosophy of the Chris- 
tian religion ? What relation has Christianity 
to Pagan idolatry ? I thought that it was to 
cure all these ills, heal all these wounds, and 
lift humanity to a higher, nobler being, that 
the Christian philosophy was instituted. Sup- 
pose that all you have charged to the gods of 
antiquity be admitted — then what ? Stuff and 
nonsense ! Do you think your readers are a 
lot of idiots ? 

After this, my dear sir, do not address us 
as though we were so many consummate 



INDISCREET HyPOTHESIS. ■ 2 7 

fools, or the sting of our self-respect will be 
apt to beget prejudice. 

I trust my readers will pardon me for thus 
stepping aside occasionally to address His 
Pseudolency in person. 

With the last half of page twelve (12) our 
author begins his comments upon the inhuman 
wars of the Old Testament. 

" We are asked to justify these frightful pas- 
sages, these infamous laws of war, because the 
bible is the word of God," says this apostle of 
reason. You are asked to do no such thing. 
You never were asked, and you never will be 
asked, to do any such thing by anybody with 
as much intelligence as it takes to put a pro- 
position into simple English. 

What you are asked is to take into consider- 
ation the stages of development through which 
the human race has passed since the wars of 
the Old Testament to reach what it now is, 
and then to recognize in the tribes of barbari- 
ans of those days the " people " against whom 
the "armies of invasion" were moving. 

It would be a terrible chapter to read, two 



2 8 ' MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

thousand years from now, that the United 
States forces had cut down Sitting Bull and 
his people, and yet it may be doubted if even 
the god of reason would paralyze the uplifted 
arm of the governm.ent — if Mr. Sitting Bull 
could only be gotten hold of. 

I am free to admit that there is much in the 
Old Testament history which, looked at from 
our distant perspective, is horrible and revolt- 
ing ; but we must not forget that imtcJi of the 
Old Testai7ieiit is simple history, setting 2tp no 
claim to divine inspiration, except as to a faith- 
ful narration of facts, events with w^hich God 
had nothing to do, or for which he was no 
more responsible than, He Is for the present 
war In the East. 

Were the history of the present Russo- 
Turkish war to be read two thousand years 
from now, it would, no doubt, stand recorded 
as a Christian war on the part of Russia, and 
the historian could offer abundant evidence 
for his statement, false as it would be. 

So, no doubt. Is much of the Old Testament 
history. There are many rulers who claim the 



OLD TESTAMENT WARS. 29 

authority of God who are really directed by 
the devil. 

Because the United States is a Christian 
nation it does not follow that every ruler of 
the United States is a Christian, nor that 
if he gets into a drunken brawl or wages an 
unholy war that his acts are sanctioned by the 
Christians' God. 

And, aside from all this, does Mr. Ingersoll 
find anything in the teachings of Christ that 
countenances war, or violence of any kind ? ' 
Does he not know that the old law, that was 
made for the barbarous ages of the past,' is 
repealed in the new? 

How a lawyer of his excellent sagacity, not 
to speak of honesty, c'ould make such a plea 
as he makes here is, certainly, very remarkable. 
But a personal acquaintance with Mr. Ingersoll 
makes his feigned horror of war extremely 
astonishing — to put it mildly. 

To return to the text: ''The instant that 

we admit that a book is too sacred to be rea- 

« 

soned about, we are mental serfs," says this 
politico-philosophe. Well, who disputes it ? 



30 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

Again : *'It is infinitely absurd to suppose that 
a god would address a communication to in- 
telligent beings, and yet make it a crime to be 
punished in eternal flames for them to use 
their intelligence for the purpose of under- 
standing his communication." Who disputes 
it ? Who ever heard of a god of that kind ? 
O, Prince of Pettifoggers ! 

These are only samples of the sentences 
with which he crams his book. His favorite 
method seems to be to make a statement that 
nobody disputes, and then proceed to argue 
as though everybody that is not an Infidel 
does dispute it. 

Here is a brace of them that he has stand- 
ing out by themselves, as a sort of couplet — 
a pair of metaphysical twins, as it were : 

*' Salvation though slavery is worthless. 
Salvation from slavery is inestimable." 

A question might arise, just here, as to 
whether His Pseudolency is a less slave to the 
teachings of Voltaire, Paine and Co., than the 
Church to the teachings of Christ — but we 
will not raise it. 



THE DEVILS OF HISTORY. 31 

After a number of such ultimatums as those 
we have quoted, His Pseudolency devotes 
some pages to the devils of history. It is 
here that the Mephisto part of him takes 
the reins. 

Through these pages there is the most 
eloquent, powerful and, as I may say, exhaust- 
ive defense of " the devils " that has ever 
been made this side of their place of general 
rendezvous — the lecturer seems to make this 
a sort of peroration to his former discourse, 
and hence its eloquence ; he speaks as a minis- 
ter and envoy with full authority, and hence 
its power; he makes a personal matter of it, 
and hence it is entirely exhaustive. It has 
been said : a man is never so strong as when 
fighting for his own fireside ; never so eloquent 
as when defending his family history. 

It is here that he utters those remarkable 
words with which he adorns his title-page : 
" Banish me from Eden when you will," etc. 
But they do not stand alone here, as there — 
he prefaces them — paves the way to their 
acceptance, as it were. Hear what an elo- 



3 2 ■ ME PHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

quent and touching appeal he makes in this 
glowing picture of the elder Mephisto. 

'* If the account given in Genesis is really 
true, ought we not, after all, to thank this ser- 
pent ? He was the first schoolmaster, the first 
advocate of learning, the first enemy of igno- 
rance, the first to whisper in human ears the 
sacred word of liberty, the creator of ambition, 
the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of 
investigation, of progress, and of civilization." 

It is just after he has delivered himself of 
this, while standing off and regarding the 
masterpiece of his art — this matchless pen- 
portrait of his patron and hero, that he 
breaks loose from himself, lets go all holds, so 
to speak, and gives vent to the " Give me the 
storm and tempest " business. 

Ah, " what a piece of work is man ! " — but 
here we must end the quotation — we might, 
however, add the " how infinite in faculties " 
part of i't, for if there ever was an evidence 
of wonderful " faculties," we have it here. 
O temporal O mores I — Oh, pshaw! 

After this Herculean effort, His Pseudo- 



PO T-PO URRI. 3 3 

lency takes up the thought with which he 
opened his lecture. Why he dropped it so 
suddenly before, can only be accounted for, 
perhaps, (as a like style of procedure pre- 
vails all through the book,) from the fact 
that he has no regular gait — simply plungeth 
where he listeth and thou seest the dust 
thereof but canst not tell whence he cometh 
or whither he goeth, and, may we not con- 
clude, " so^ is every one that is born of the " 
^ devil ? 

The first sentence of his lecture, which 
we have already given, it will be remembered, 
was as follows : " Each nation has created a 
god," etc. The one with which he renews the 
thought on page twenty-six (26) runs after 
this fashion : " Nothing can be plainer than 
that each nation gives to its god its peculiar 
characteristics, and that every individual gives 
to his god his personal peculiarities." He con- 
tinues : " Man has no ideas and can have none, 
except those suggested by his surroundings. 
He cannot conceive of anything utterly unlike 
what he has seen or felt," etc. And so he 



3 4 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

goes on In his philosophical semi-plagiarisms. 
But I have less fault to find with these bor- 
rowed scraps of wisdom than the ultimatum 
with which he follows them. It Is, surely, as 
illogical a sequence as he could have possibly 
blundered into. Here it is : 

" Beyond nature man cannot go even in 
thought ; above nature he cannot rise ; below 
nature he cannot fall." 

Now suppose that instead of this pot-pourri 
we should substitute the following : 

Man has no Ideas, and can have none, ex- 
cept those that are founded in fact, (this Is, 
virtually, the boiling down of His Pseudo- 
lency's pot, after the impurities have been 
skimmed off,) — which, once admitted, this 
follows : 

Man can, therefore, conceive of nothing 
which does not, in some form or degree, exist. 
Again : 

Man can aspire to nothing of which he has 
no conception. The existence of aspiration, 
therefore, necessarily implies conception ; con- 
ception necessarily Implies being — fact. 



THE LOGICAL SEQUENCE. 35 

Man's one supreme aspiration is immortality 
and eternal life — heaven ; therefore the ex- 
istence of heaven is 2. fact. 

So, as I say, I have little fault to find with 
Mr. Ingersoll's apparent plagiarisms ; it is to 
his sequences that I object. 

The author, next, takes occasion to offer 
an abridged commentary on the fourth chapter 
of St. Matthew, which I will give, as it is quite 
brief, quotation included : 

" Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into 
the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 
And when the tempter came to Him, he said : 
If thou be the Son of God command that these 
stones be made bread. But he answered and 
said : It is written, Man shall not live by bread 
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out 
of the mouth of God ! 

" Then the devil taketh Him up into the 
holy city, and setteth Him upon a pinnacle of 
the temple, and saith unto Him: If thou be 
the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is 
written, He shall give His angels charge con- 
cerning thee, lest at any time thou dash thy 



3 6 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him : 
It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the 
Lord thy God. Again the devil taketh him 
up into an exceeding high mountain and show- 
eth him all the kingdoms of the world and the 
glory of them, and saith unto him : All these 
will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and wor- 
ship me." 

Here are Mr. Ingersoll's comments : 
" The Christians now claim that Jesus was 
God. If he was God, of course the devil 
knew that fact, and yet according to this 
account, the devil took the omnipotent God 
and placed Him upon a pinnacle of the temple, 
and endeavored to induce Him to dash Him- 
self against the earth. Failing in that, he 
took the Creator, owner and governor of the 
universe, up into an exceeding high mountain 
and offered him this world — this grain of sand 
— if He, the God of all the worlds, would fall 
down and worship him, a poor devil, without 
even a tax title to one foot of dirt ! Is it pos- 
sible the devil was such an idiot 1 Should any 
great credit be given to this Deity for not 



PALPABLE PETTIFOGGING. 37 

being caught with such chaff? Think of it ! 
The devil, the prince of sharpers, the king of 
cunning, the master of finesse, trying to bribe 
God with a grain of sand that belonged to 
God ! Is there in all the religious literature 
of the world anything more grossly absurd 
than this?" 

Again, I say, oh. Prince of Pusillanimous 
Pettifoggers ! that could put in print such a 
construction as this ; for how can it be possi- 
ble that so brilliant a man could have been so 
stupid ? 

Yet, with that charity for ignorance which I 
have often demanded, no doubt, on my own 
behalf, I will proceed for the time being upon 
the presumption that His Pseudolency was 
Innocently in earnest, and give what I have 
always supposed to be the very common-sense 
acceptance of the passage in question. 

Christ allegorically represents, here, human- 
ity in three different stages or conditions, each 
subject to the temptations of evil according to 
his place or condition. 

In the first, He personates that unfortunate 



3 8 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

class who, unprovided with the necessities of 
life, are tempted to seek the means of physical 
existence through other than the proper chan- 
nels. To these the lesson is found in the 
answer He gives : '' Man shall not live by 
bread alone, but by every word that proceed- 
eth out of the mouth of God." 

In the second, Christ symbolizes those who 
are tempted to test, as a matter of simple 
experiment, the promises of God. To these 
He would say, " Thou shalt not tempt the 
Lord thy God." 

In the third. He typifies those who, by vir- 
tue of superior abilities, are capable of rising 
to power and place, and who are tempted to 
secure these ends even at the cost of their own 
souls. The lesson is a very suggestive one. 
To these He would say, " Entertain the thought 
not for a single moment ; there is more danger 
of your falling than all others" ; or, in the 
words of the answer given, to such a tempter 
say, " Get thee hence, Satan ! " 

That this entire passage is simply figurative, 
and was intended as nothing else, is demon- 



A THOUGHT FOR MR. TTNDALL. 39 

strated in the thought of seeing all the king- 
doms of the world from an exceeding high 
mountain. Lite7'ally considered, it would have 
required an exceeding high mountain, sure 
enough, from which to take in so extensive a 
view. 

Now, I am not a preacher (this is, however, 
no doubt, quite evident), nor have I oppor- 
tunity, perhaps I should say inclination, to 
consult the commentators, and so I don't 
know whether this is an orthodox version or 
not, nor do I care ; but it strikes me as being 
pre-eminently common - sense - odox, and I'll 
chance it. 

[I am tempted here to borrow another brace 
of Dr. Holmes' brackets, and as the good Doc- 
tor has plenty to spare, I think I shall do so, 
just to drop in two little items apropos of two 
of the three answers given by Christ in the 
quotations we have cited. Here they are: 

I think that the one I have numbered " se- 
cond " has especial application to, and includes 
excellent advice for, Mr. Tyndall in relation to 
his " prayer test." 



40 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

The " third " may be studied with possible 
good effect by the gifted and accomplished 
hero of this paper.] 

Immediately following this dissertation on 
the temptation, our author favors us with the 
following : 

" These devils, according to the Bible, were 
of various kinds; some could. speak and hear, 
others were deaf and dumb. All could not be 
cast out in the same way. The deaf and dumb 
spirits were quite difficult to deal with. St. 
Mark tells us of a gentleman who brought his 
son to Christ. The boy, it seems, was pos- 
sessed of a dumb spirit, over which the disciples 
had no control. Jesus said unto the spirit, I 
charge thee come out of him, and enter no 
more into him ! Whereupon the deaf spirit 
(having heard what was said) cried out (being 
dumb) and immediately vacated the premises." 

Now, for profoundness of stupidity, and ab- 
solute metaphysical idiocy, I challenge the 
world to show anything that will compare with 
that ! It is, positively, a disgrace and slander 
upon the intelligence of Infidelity (for Mr. 



OH, PRINCE OF COMMENTATORS. 4 1 

Ingersoll holds a position as the greatest In- 
fidel of his country) that such a construction 
as this should get into print. Need I explain 
the text? Yes, for His Pseudolency's sake, 
for I see> by my morning's paper that he re- 
peats it in his lecture in New York. I would 
not insult an intelligent reader by deeming it 
necessary. 

Know, then, oh. Prince of commentators, 
that it was simply the boy who was dumb, not 
the sphnt that caused the affliction. For all 
we know, tJiat evil spirit may have had the 
power of hearing and speaking, even to as 
subtle purpose as yourself. We may be as- 
sured of this much : that he knew who was 
talking to him, and obeyed, as any sensible 
devil would do under the circumstances, — did 
not lift up his puny strength in rebellion. Let 
this serve us all as a valuable lesson ! 

But even granting, as you put it, that it was 
the evil spirit that was deaf and dumb, and 
not the boy, do you not realize that the power 
that was able to deliver the boy of his in- 
firmity, i. e., cast out the devil, was sufificient to 
2* 



4 2 ' MEPHIS TO-MIXO 7 A UR US. 

gii^e hearing and speech to the devil He cast 
out ? Oh, what a precious mess you have 
made of it ! 

Our author devotes the next twenty pages 
of his work to a discussion of cause and effect. 
All readers are conversant with what he offers 
here, and have been for many years ; he brings 
nothinor new. 

It would be tedious to follow him through 
the throes of his struggle — his plunging and 
bellowing as he starts off at full speed, first 
in the beaten track of one herd, then in 
another, then, retracing his steps to start on a 
third, then breaking across paths ; crashing 
through forests, and pawing the beautiful 
grasses and flowers that have been gathering 
their strength and glory for years. No ; we 
will not try to follow him where he loses him- 
self again and again — in the jungles where 
many sincere and earnest men have been for- 
ever lost — in the dark and gloomy and end- 
less caverns of doubt — the unfathomable 
depths of the m^^sterious — the limitless 
heights of the unknown ! We will wait, and 



SUUS ClII^UE MOS. 43 

he will soon return to the place whence he 
started; for he is lost, and goes ever round 
and round ! 

Ah ! he is already here ! And now we shall 
hear what he says, for though it is not new 
it is unique. 

" Thought is a form of force. We walk with 
the same force with which we think. Man is 
an organism, that changes several forms of 
force into thought force. Man is a machine, 
into which we put what we call food, and pro- 
duce what we call thought. Think of that 
wonderful chemistry by which bread was 
changed into the divine tragedy of Hamlet." 

It will be observed in this passage, as in all 
that His Pseudolency is pleased to write or 
speak, there is no apparent evidence of hu- 
mility. He deals entirely in ultimatums. 
Suits cuiqite mos^ and this is his. It is to be 
hoped that he will outgrow this, but the pros- 
pect is, certainly, not flattering. 

The question which he disposes of here so 
summarily, I need hardly state, is one with 
which the greatest minds have been struggling 



44 MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS. 

for centuries ; the brightest lights of his own 
philosophical household — his very household 
gods, as It were — have trembled In the pres- 
ence of the awful responsibility of pronouncing 
upon It ; and yet, with all the assurance of a 
mountebank, this man simply waves his quill 
In air, It poises but a moment, descends, traces 
a few brief lines on the page, and lo ! the mys- 
tery of mysteries Is solved ! 

Through all the years of the past, In which 
scientists have wrestled with fact and phi- 
losophy, the principle Involved here has ex- 
hausted the highest resources of all schools. 
In this struggle have been numbered the 
brightest geniuses and most profound phi- 
losophers, the astute scholars of the world. 
Honest, sincere, noble, genuine men have 
devoted their lives to the solution of this one 
great problem that underlies all others. 

It has appeared In a multitude of forms, 
and has been considered from as many differ- 
ent standpoints. 

It is presented here in its latest form, which 
resolves Itself Into this : 



MATERIALISM VERSUS SCIENCE. 45 

Whether the action of the brain causes 
thought, or whether thought, an extraneous 
something which we cannot comprehend, 
causes the action of the brain. 

But the clouds which so long obscured the 
horizon of faith have, at last, been dispelled 
by the sunlight of science, thank God, and now 
we may walk out in the morning of the glori- 
ous day ! The path is very plain and very 
simple. We have only to start right, and 
then keep straight ahead. Truths that are 
of most value are usually expressed in sim- 
plest form ; they are seldom found in the 
labyrinthine depths of indefinite metaphysics. 

Now, had Mr. Ingersoll even consulted 
the very primer of science, he would have 
found, standing out prominently, as the first 
letter of its alphabet, this incontrovertible 
truth — Matter is inert. 

Had he taken the trouble to consult Prof. 
Bain, who is the acknowledged leader of 
the most recent school of materialists, — a 
school which embraces the acute scholars and 
brightest minds of that philosophy — he would 



46 MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS. 

have found even him admitting that matter 
is inert and cannot originate force. 

Had he read a Httle farther in his primer 
he would have found that there are but two 
things in the universe — ^natter and miiid. 

It would have required but a very gentle 
exercise of his reasoning faculties to show him 
that since matter is inert and cannot originate 
force or motion, and 7nind is the only other 
existence in the universe, force or motion 
must emanate from mind. 

And then he could, surely, have endured the 
further mental effort necessary to show him 
that (as he had already committed himself to 
the proposition that tho7ight is a form of force) 
thought must emanate from mind^ not matter, 
or bread, as he puts it. 

And all this without going beyond the very 
primer of science. 

It is by no means sure, however, that he 
would have had the honesty to confess to the 
truth of that which we have shown here, simple 
as it is. Now, as I have already stated, I usu- 
ally accord to all men honesty of purpose, but 



CAUSE AND EFFECT, ''/F:' 47 

I fear we must make an exception here, and also 
in the veryn ext point he seeks to make, for it 
could not have been a lack of mental acumen 
(for Mr. Ingersoll is as brilliant a man as there 
is on the continent) which prompted him, on 
the page following the quotation I have given, 
to start out to prove that " matter, force, law, 
order, cause and effect, exist without a being 
superior to nature " in the way that he does. 
Here are his words : 

" Now, suppose that two atoms should come 
together, would there be an effect 1 Yes." 
From this he makes to follow, law, order, etc. 
It will be observed that his " suppose " brings 
about an effect without a cause, which is scien- 
tifically impossible. Of course if two atoms 
should come together, all else that he claims 
would follow ; but that which is embraced in 
the little word if, or his " suppose," \s just what 
is in controversy. 

It were easy to demolish the entire super- 
structure which he so artfully puts together in 
the pages that follow here, — for it all stands 
upon the same foundation, this same " sup- 



48 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

pose," this same little if with which he start- 
ed, — by the application of the two simple 
lessons we have referred to from the little 
first primer of Science ; for scientific truth 
is as relentless as it is merciless and power- 
ful, and the two little dynamic atoms in our 
possession would reduce his rickety old mu- 
seum of nondescript curiosities to a mass of 
worthless debris in short order. 

To those who have not had the honor of a 
personal acquaintance with Mr. Ingersoll, the 
wonder is, no doubt, that a man of his appar- 
ent erudition in other directions should be so 
grossly ignorant of the very first principles of 
science, and still have the audacity to send 
out a volume involving so many scientific 
theories. Not so, however, with any one who 
may know him. 

He is a nineteenth century Lawyer and the 
paragon of Advocates ; of massive brain, of 
brilliant wit, of incomparable repartee. He is 
acute but not accurate, wise but not learned, 
great but not god-like ; with an entire absence 
of special knowledge he dons the garb of a 



A PLEA FOR CRAMMING. 



49 



pkzlosophewiXh. admirable skill, for he possess- 
es tact, talent and tenacity, and is unfettered 
by men, methods, or modesty. He is more 
powerful on the rostrum than on paper, — 
better suited to the arena than the library or 
boudoir. He is a master of trick and of ora- 
tory ; indeed, in this, I think he is without a 
peer in America. He has a quaint style of 
pittting his sentences, which gives them a pe- 
culiar attraction ; and so he is quite popular 
with the masses, particularly so with those 
who would live without the restraint of law — 
his very audacity, with this class, is a commen- 
dation. 

But, really, I must beg pardon — I did 
not intend to become his biographer. I am 
rather disposed to laughter, and when I 
find him urging with so much eloquence that 
" Man is a machine into which we put what 
we call food and produce what we call 
thought," I cannot help the reflection, what a 
great pity it is that we were not all cra'm7ned 
in our youth. 

We have but to turn a page or two farther 



50 ME PHIS rO-MINO TA UR US. 

to find that ]\Ir. In^ersoU makes an admission 
that is fatal to his entire philosophy. I will 
quote the verse complete, for I desire to give 
him the full force of connections. 

" Nature, so far as we can discern, without 
passion and without intuition, forms, trans- 
forms, and retransforms forever. She neither 
weeps nor rejoices. She produces man with- 
out purpose, and obliterates him without re- 
gret. She knows no distinction between the 
beneficial and the hurtful. Poison and nutri- 
tion, pain and joy, life, and death, smiles and 
tears are alike to her. She is neither merci- 
ful nor cruel. She cannot be flattered by 
worship nor melted by tears. She does not 
know even the attitude of prayer. She ap- 
preciates no difference between poison in the 
fanes of snakes and mercy in the hearts of 
men. Only throztgh Man does natttre take 
cognizance of the good, the ti^ue, and the beau- 
tifitl ; and, so far as we know, man is the 
highest intelligence." 

The sentence I have put in italics — only 
through Man does 7iatttre take cognizance of 



A FATAL ADMISSION. 



51 



^ke good, the h^ue, and the beautiful — is not 
Italicised in the original. With this exception 
I have given it just as it appears there. Now 
I propose to let it remain, just as it is, with- 
out comment, or analysis, or any word of 
mine whatever. 

And there it stands! — a monument of truth, 
looking down upon the- debris of error that 
is all about it ! There it stands ! Kissing the 
sunlight of its higher, purer atmosphere, while 
malarious contagion broods round its base ! 
There it stands ! In solitary grandeur, hero 
and conqueror. In the very midst of the battle- 
field, while the self-slain legions of error strew, 
everywhere, the plain ! 

Let us carve an inscription upon it — an in- 
scription that has graced the monuments of 
many battle-fields before. 

" Truth crushed to earth will rise again, 
The immortal years of God are hers! 
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain 
And dies amid her worshipers." 

A careful observer will notice that it is 
seldom the case but that in every contro- 
versy Truth will assert herself Was there 



52 MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS. 

ever an instance where she was more sig- 
nally successful than here ? I have never 
known one. It was easily done — the means 
of Truth are usually simple. His Pseudo- 
lency was merely allowed to proceed, and 
the Minotaur part of him got the advantage 
of the Mephisto part of him, and as he 
went plunging and . bellowing and roaring 
through the fields of philosophy, he fell 
over one of the corner-stones of science that 
I spoke of a while ago. 

Hie jacet Ingersoll — His Pseudolency has 
more lives than a cat. Before we can finish 
his epitaph, we find him up again and lashing 
his sides with redoubled fury. How he roars, 
as he pronounces the following : 

" Would an infinite, wise, good and power- 
ful God, intending to produce man, commence 
with the lowest possible forms of life, with the 
simplest organisms that can be imagined, and 
during innumerable periods of time, slowly 
and almost imperceptibly Improve upon the 
rude beginning, until man was evolved? 
Would countless ages thus be wasted In the 



ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE FENCE. 



53 



production of awkward forms, afterward aban- 
doned ? " 

Well, what would Mr. Ingersoll say to this? 
It strikes me that these questions would be 
more pertinent if directed to an Infidel. I am 
unacquainted with any form of Christianity 
that holds to the evolution theory of creation, 
so far as man is concerned. 

The god which His Pseudolency paws and 
bellows around so threateningly is not the 
Christian's God ; it is the boasted god of the 
Infidels. It w^ill be discovered, here, that our 
Minotaur has simply lost all control of him- 
self, in his rage, and, not observing that he has 
got on the wrong side of the philosophical 
fence, he is goring his own god and tearing 
up his own plantation. 

Hear him. again ; he is becoming very fero- 
cious : 

" What would we think of a father who 
should give a farm to his children, and, before 
giving them possession, should plant upon it 
thousands of deadly shrubs and vines ; should 
stock it with ferocious beasts and poisonous 



5 4 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

reptiles ; should take pains to put a few 
swamps in the neighborhood to breed ma- 
laria ; should so arrange matters that the 
ground would occasionally open and swallow 
a few of his darlings, and besides all this, 
should establish a few volcanoes in the im- 
mediate vicinity, that might at any moment 
overwhelm his children with rivers of fire. 
Suppose that this father neglected to tell 
his children which of the beasts were deadly ; 
that the reptiles were poisonous ; and kept 
the volcano business a profound secret ; would 
we pronounce him angel, or fiend?" 

Now, let us admit, for the while, that His 
Pseudolency is right in maintaining that there 
is no such a being as the Christian God — the 
natural state of the world, which he has very 
accurately pictured as a farm, is still the same. 
This is no catch-logic, it is a fair proposition. 

Mr. Inofersoll's entire effort in his lecture is 
to prove that the Christian God is a myth ; or, 
in other words, that there is no such a being, 
and sets up, instead, his god of Reason, what- 
ever that may be, as the author and finisher 



THE MI NO TAUR AT BAT. 55 

of all things. He then gives a very graphic 
and correct description of the world as we find 
it; it follows, therefore, that the "infinite 
fiend " who created the world is Mr. Inorersoll's 
god of Reason. This is the only logical de- 
duction. 

There is but one way by which Mr. Inger- 
soll can save his eod from the anathema he 
hurls here, and that is in the theory that the 
world was created by chance. He will hardly 
espouse this ; the Mephisto part of him is too 
cunning to permit it. 

Behold, then, our Minotaur at bay ! Noth- 
ing is left to him now but to lash his sides 
and paw the dust and foam in impotent rage. 
While he is thus employed, let us have a little 
talk to ourselves, for while Mr. Ingersoll is 
silenced he is not answered. 

The world is full of " deadly shrubs and 
vines, and ferocious beasts, and poisonous rep- 
tiles, and malarious swamps, and volcanoes," 
and millions of other agents of death that Mr. 
Ingersoll does not name. Nay, even we are 
ourselves destroyers. 



56 MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS. 

Every moment of our existence is at the 
expense of myriads of other existences. 

A million lives are sacrificed that I may 
finish this line. 

And yet we call our God a God of infinite 
mercy, tenderness and love. 

How shall we reconcile this? 

This is the great stumbling-block of Chris- 
tians — Christians who think just enough to 
get into a mystery without thinking enough 
to get out. 

And this is the perpetual sneer of Skeptics, 
and the taunt of the Infidels. Let us see if 
we may not meet the issue fairly, and dispose 
of it fairly and conclusively. If we do this 
we are consistent Christians ; if we do not, we 
are inconsistent. A man is worse than a cow- 
ard who would dodge this question — he is a 
suicide. There is no one so contemptible as 
he who willingly deceives himself Oh, what 
a hollow mockery is that faith that is founded 
upon a lie ! 

I desire to say, right here, that no society, 
religious or otherwise, or any person or per- 



THE LOGIC OF POSSIBILITIES. 57 

sons whomsoever, save and except myself, are 
either directly or indirectly responsible for the 
position I am about to assume. 

I hold then : 
First. The laws of the physical universe, just 
as they exist, are the only possible laws to 
the physical. 
Second. The laws of the spiritual universe, 
just as they exist, are the only possible laws 
to the spiritual. 
Third. The conditions of life and death, 
pleasure and pain, etc., as pertaining to the 
physical, and the conditions of happiness 
and grief, etc., as pertaining to the spiritual, 
are the positive and negative poles, abso- 
lutely necessary, respectively to physical 
and spiritual existence. 
I shall endeavor to sustain these three 
propositions from a purely scientific stand- 
point, and by strict, logical method. 

In relation, then, to our first proposition, 
that the laws of the physical universe, just as 
they exist, are the only possible law^s to the 
physical, I desire to offer : 



5 8 MEPHTS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

Fii'st. That bed-rock of scientific truth, Mat- 
ter, is indestructible. 

Second. If matter is indestructible, it follows 
that matter must always exist. 

Third. If matter must always exist, it fol- 
lows that matter can have no end. 

Fottrth. If matter can have no end, it follows 
that matter could have had no beginning. 
Since that which has a beginning must have 
an end. Since that which has no beginning 
can have no end. An axiom. 

Fifth. If matter had no beginning and can 
have no end, it follows that the laws which 
govern matter had no beginning and can have 
no end. Since the law which governs must 
be co-existent with the thing governed. 

Sixth. If the laws which orovern matter had 
no beginning and can have no end, it fol- 
lows that the laws Avhich govern matter (or 
the physical), are the only laws possible to 
the physical, as claimed in our Fii^st propo- 
sition. 

In relation to our second proposition, re- 
specting the spiritual universe, the same 



THE LOGTC CONTINUED- 59 

method need only be pursued in order to 
establish it. 

We will beein with that other bed-rock of 
scientific truth : Mind is indestructible. 

You know the scientists tell us that there 
are but two things that exist in the universe, 
— matter and mind — that the first is inert, but 
that both are indestructible. That is why I 
call the two principles I have given the bed- 
rock principles — or the two principles that 
underlie all others. 

To establish then, our second proposition, 
we will begin : 

First. Mind is indestructible. 
Second. If mind is indestructible, it follows 

that mind (by which we mean the spiritual) 

must alwavs exist. 
Third. If mind must always exist, it follows 

that mind can have no end. 
Fourth. If mind can have no end, it follows 

that mind could have had no beginning, 

since that which has a beginning must have 

an end, — since that which has no beginning 

can have no end. An axiom. 



6o MEPHIS TO-MINO TA URUS. 

Fifth. If mind had no beginning, and can 
have no end, it follows that the laws which 
govern mind (or the spiritual) had no be- 
ginning, and can have no end, — since the 
law which governs must be co-existent with 
the thing governed. 
Sixth. If the laws which govern mind (or 
the spiritual) had no beginning, and can 
have no end, it follows that the laws which 
govern mind ( or the spiritual) are the only- 
laws possible to the spiritual, as claimed in 
our second proposition. 

I think we may reach these two conclusions 
from another standpoint — the idea of God- 
ship. By God we mean the Supreme Being, 
and, as in the Persian Goda or KJioda^ we im- 
ply by the word God the idea of lord, master, 
ruler. The qualities absolutely necessary to 
Godship are those of omniscience, omnipres- 
ence, and omnipotence. No doubt we shall 
all agree in this. 

Well, if God existed prior to matter or the 
identity of other existences, of what cotdd he 
have been omniscient ? Wherein could he 



GOD AND MATTER CO-EXISTENT. 6 1 

have been omnipresent ? Over whom or 
what cotild he have been omnipotent ? Or, in 
other words, how could he have been omni- 
scient of nothing, omnipresent nowhere, om- 
nipotent over nobody ? Or, with the simple 
meaning of the very word God, how could he 
be lord, master, or ruler over nothingness ? 

Clearly, then, since God had no beginning, 
and can have no end, mind had no beginning, 
and can have no end, and matter had no be- 
ginning, and can have no end ; and therefore 
the laws that orovern mind and matter had no 

o 

beginning, and can have no end. Since the 
laws that grovern must be co-existent with the 
thing governed, they are, therefore, the only 
possible laws to Spiritual and Physical exist- 
ence. 

It may be well to drop in, right here, an 
additional scientific truth, lest our Pseudo- 
Divinity-Doctors shall throw up their hands 
in holy horror, realizing that if everything 
that has a beginning must have an end, man 
having had a beginning, according to their 
theology, must have an end. Here it is • 



6 2 MEPHIS TO-MIXO TA UR US. 

Man was made of the two already existing 
materials — matter, which the Bible speaks of 
as '' dust of the earth," and mind, which the 
Bible calls " breath of life " ; these two had no 
beginning, and can have no end ; therefore 
man had no beginning, and can have no end, 
the body being a part of matter, and the 
soul being a part of God. 

[We cannot pause to discuss the distinc- 
tions of mind and soul or spirit, the relations 
of bodv and soul, or the relations of soul to 
God after the soul has been granted a sepa- 
rate, individual identity by God ; that must re- 
main for another tim^e ; though all this may be 
logically demonstrated.] 

Before passing to our third proposition, I 
wish to apply the first two to the subject be- 
fore us. 

Now, if we have established those two pro- 
positions, it will be seen that responsibility for 
the laws of physical and spiritual existence 
rests not with God, but in the very necessities 
to physical and spiritual existence. Or, to be 
plainer, what Mr. Ingersoll refers to as deadly 



THE LAW OF OPPOSITES. 63 

shrubs and vines, and ferocious beasts, and 
poisonous reptiles, and malarious swamps, and 
the millions of other accents of death, are not 
chargeable to the malignity of a creator, but 
to the absohite necessities. 

The truth of this will become only the more 
apparent after the consideration of our third 
proposition, which was as follows : 

The conditions of life and death, pleasure 
and pain, etc., as pertaining to the physical, 
and the conditions of happiness and grief, etc., 
as pertaining to the spiritual, are the positive 
and ne^^ative poles, absolutely necessary re- 
spectively to physical and spiritual existence. 

Now the poverty of our language compels 
me to explain what I mean by the positive and 
negative poles — a figure I have taken from 
electrics — and in the explanation I think I 
shall establish our proposition. 

I shall endeavor to be very plain and 
simple, for the plainest, simplest language is 
always the strongest and most convincing. 
And we may also be very brief in this. By 
positive and fiegative poles, then, in the con- 



64 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

nection I have used them, as absolute neces- 
sities, I mean what geometricians imply when 
they speak of two lines as necessary to a paral- 
lel ; what Prof. Cook implies when he says 
that there cannot be an over without an 
under, a higher without a lower, an inner 
without an outer, a hither without a )'onder. 
It is as inconceivable that pleasure should 
exist without the possibility of pain, or that 
happiness should exist without the possibility 
of grief, as that a parallel should exist without 
the second line ; or that you can have an over 
without an under, a higher without a lower, 
an inner without an outer, a hither without a 
yonder. Each takes its place ^in the list of 
absohUe necessities. And so we migrht con- 
tinue in the realms of matter and mind, 
throughout which we can fi7id nothing without 
its opposite. And man, compelled to move in 
a given direction, would simply be propelled 
as an inanimate. In other words : if it were 
impossible for man to move except in the 
straight line oi good, he would be, and co2tld 
be, no more than the tree that springs up 



THE LOGICAL SEQUENCE. 65 

from the earth as a blade of grass, grows 
to the perfection of maturity, buds, blooms 
bears its fruit, and then dies, to go back 
to the elements. 

Now, we may lay down two broad principles 
here as the logical sequence of our former 
propositions ; and while we need hold no 
school of physicists and no school of philoso- 
phers responsible, we, at the same time, may 
challenge disproval. Here they are : 
First. There is not an atom in the physical 
universe which is absolute, i. e., entirely in- 
dependent of all other atoms. 
Second. There is not a condition in the spirit- 
ual universe which is absolute, i. e., entirely 
independent of all other conditions. 
It will -be observed that I have not yet dis- 
posed of the conditions of life and death to 
the physical, of our tlm^d proposition and 
It will be remembered that I numbered these 
as with the absolute necessities. Let us con- 
sider them : 

From the standpoint of science, life and 
death are but the processes of re-creation in 



6 6 ME PHIS TO-MIXO TA UR US. 

which death is as absolutely necessary as the 
first line of a parallel ; consequently, from a 
scientific point of view, there is no loss, the 
new life compensating for the old death. 

This pertains to the animal, vegetable, and 
mineral kingdoms, and, according to science, 
has always done so — the law being co-existent 
with the thing governed. The responsibility, 
therefore, rests not with God, but with the 
necessities to being. 

Besides, I challenge t\\^ possibility of a con- 
ception of being other than this. For that 
would involve the makinor of somethinor out of 
nothing, and, as Mr. Ingersoll has pertinently 
remarked, *' Nothing, considered in the light of 
a raw material, is a most decided failure." 

But you will say here, how do you reconcile 
this with the Bible account of creation ? I 
answer, by the Bible itself. You will reply that 
the Bible says : " In the beginning God cre- 
ated the heavens and the earth." fNow bear 
in mind it is you who have opened the Bible, 
not I.) I reply, the Bible says no such thing. 
You contend that It does, and show me the 



FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 6 J 

text of a King James translation. I then re- 
fer you to the original, if you are a Hebrew 
scholar ; if not, I commend you to any He- 
brew scholar in whom you may have confi 
dence. Ask him to translate the Hebrew 
text for you into simple English. He will 
tell you that the first verse is very difficult to 
translate accurately into our language, and 
show you the peculiarities of the Hebrew. 
He will tell you that the Anglo-Saxon words 
which most correctly embody the meaning are 
as follows : 
First verse : In this beginning God rearranged 

the heavens and the earth. 
Second verse : For the earth had been wrecked 

and desolated. 

Now you may ask, Why was it not trans- 
lated so in the King James text .f^ Probably 
for the same reason that they were so in- 
accurate in many other places. You know """"^ 
that they translated from the Greek, which. ^ -^ 
was itself a translation from the Hebrew.! <r/\^^ 
And you will perhaps remember the experi- ^b^*^ 
ment that was tried a few years ago, of ^O^ 





68 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

passing a simple English sentence through 
half a dozen different languages, and then 
back into English, Its author would have 
never recognized it. 

This that is given here is the correct 
translation, and it is as old as Polycarp and 
St. Aug2istine. 

But you will say : Back of this beginning 
there must have been the former earth and 
other worlds. Very correct ! Matter has 
always existed, and God has always existed, 
and as He put this world together from 
already existing material, so has He put 
other worlds together. 

The best way is, I think, to make it a 
principle to accept a fact wherever it may 
come from ; and if, like a streak of lightning, 
it crashes into our " metin'-house," go to work 
to repair the damages, and make things light- 
ning-proof for the future. 

Now I do not consider that I am called upon 
to believe anything simply because it is in the 
Bible, but because it is ti^ue. It is not true 
merely because it is in the Bible, but it is in 



BIBLE AND SCIENCE IN HARMONT. 69 

the Bible because it is true ; and that is 
why there is nothing in the Bible that is not 
trzie. 

By substituting this for the King James 
version, the first chapter of Genesis correctly 
understood will be found to be in entire har- 
mony with the teachings of Science, and the 
most accurate and wonderful piece of epit- 
omized history that can be found in the 
literature of the world. 

When Mr. Ingersoll proclaims that there is 
an irrepressible conflict between Science and 
Christianity, he is but repeating a declara- 
tion that was made years ago when ignorance, 
like a pall of universal right, enveloped the 
world. There is yet a sort of conflict which 
is kept up between certain scientists and a 
few ignorant, though, no doubt, well-meaning 
theologians ; but there is no conflict between 
Science and Christianity, and the day is not 
far distant when science will be universally 
recognized, as it is already in the higher 
schools of philosophy and advanced theology, 
as the hand-maid of Christianity. 



70 ME PHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

This is no idle boast, but as sure as that 
to morrow's dawn will supersede the ni^ht. 

But now our Minotaur is ready for another 
charge ; he has partially recovered from his 
recent defeat, and is preparing to renew the 
attack. Listen to him : 

" Here empires may be overthrown ; dynas- 
ties may be extinguished in blood ; millions 
of slaves may toil 'neath the fierce rays of 
the sun and the cruel strokes of the lash ; 
yet all is happiness in heaven. Pestilences 
may strew the earth with corpses of the 
loved ; the survivors may bend above them 
in agony, yet the placid bosom of heaven is 
unruffled. Children may expire vainly asking 
for bread; babes may be devoured by ser- 
pents, while gods sit smiling in the clouds. 
The innocent may languish unto death in ob- 
scurity of dungeons; brave men and heroic 
women may be changed to ashes at the 
bigot's stake, while heaven is filled with 
songs of joy. Out on the wild sea, in dark- 
ness and in storm, the shipwrecked struggle 
with the cruel waves, while angels play upon 



THE INFIDEL HE A VEN. J I 

their golden harps. ... In heaven they 
are too happy to have sympathy, too busy 
singing to aid the imploring and destitute. 
Their eyes are blinded ; their ears are stop- 
ped, and their hearts are turned to stone by 
the infinite selfishness of joy. . . . The 
smiles of the deities are unacquainted with 
the tears of men. The shouts of heaven 
drown the sobs of earth." 

What there is here of fact, so far as the 
laws of nature are concerned, I have already 
answered at some length in the preceding 
pages ; what remains of fiction I will now 
notice briefly. 

It will be observed that our Minotaur is 
"still so blinded by his impotent rage that he 
knows not his own. He charges here through 
the Infidel heaven, paws up its Infidel streets, 
and butts down its Infidel walls ; makes war 
upon the Infidel angels, and gores the Infidel 
god. 

For the Christian heaven is a heaven 
wherein there is, more joy over one that is 
saved than over ninety and nine that went 



7 2 MEPHIS TG-MINO TA UR US. 

not astray. For the Christian angels are 
they that minister continually unto the chil- 
dren of men. For the Clu'istian God is One 
who so loved the world that He gave His 
only begotten Son that whosoever believeth 
in Him should not perish but have everlast- 
ing life. 

Mr. Ingersoll devotes the remainder of 
his lecture to prophecy, in which he predicts 
the downfall of the Christian system, and 
supports his position by arguing that as all 
the religions of the barbarous ages have 
fallen into ruin, so must the religion of the 
Christian age. 

Now, this may be good enough Infidel 
logic, but it is not the logic of common 
sense, not even of very common sense. 

Because systems founded in error and ig- 
norance have failed, therefore, a system found- 
ed in truth and knowledge must fail 1 Surely, 
the Mephisto part has retired ; this is too 
stupid to be cunning ; it is entirely Mino- 
taurian. 

Oh, massive-fronted Ingersoll ! Verily, and 



WANTED, A NEW MIRACLE ! 73 

of a truth, great is Reason, and great is Inger- 
soll, her prophet ! Selah ! 

We come now to the peroration. But His 
Pseudolency makes an entire new departure 
in the way of rhetorical construction. He 
puts his peroration right in the middle of 
his discourse, and so we must go back to 
consider it. Of course he has both the legal 
and constitutional right, if he chooses, to do 
so. I simply make the allusion as a sort of 
landmark in my survey. 

Here is the passage referred to : 
" The church wishes us to believe. Let the 
church, or one of its intellectual saints, per- 
form a miracle, and we will believe. . . . 
We have had talk enough. We have listened 
to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that 
we wish to hear. We have read your Bible 
and the works of your best minds. We have 
heard your prayers, your solemn groans, and 
your reverential amens. All these amount 
to less than nothing. We want one fact ; 
we beg at the doors of your churches for 
just one little fact. We pass our hats along 



74 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

your pews and under your pulpits, and im- 
plore you for just one fact. We know all 
about your mouldy wonders and your stale 
miracles. We want a this year's fact. We 
want only one. Give us one fact for charity." 

Now, notwithstanding the ludicrous spec- 
tacle of an Infidel calling for a fact, while the 
entire system of infidelity is founded in 
negation, still, as " it is the breathing time of 
day with me," I will endeavor to satisfy His 
Pseudolency, and give him that for w^hich he 
so melodramatically pleads. 

As I before remarked, this perorative appeal 
was made in the middle of his lecture, before 
he had lashed himself into such a fury, when 
the Minotaur part took entire control, — so 
that it is the Mephisto part that suggests this 
— it is not without cunning. 

No doubt His Pseudolency communed with 
himself something after this fashion : Now 
facts are as old as creation itself I will call 
for a new fact which is at once impossible. 
Again, the Christian God has expressly for- 
bidden that His children should test Him, for 



THE WANT SUPPLIED. 



75 



the test's sake. I will, therefore, demand of 
them a miracle. They can comply with 
neither and I shall have made my point. 

So this appeal is not altogether without 
subtlety, and Mr. Ingersoll, no doubt, felt that 
it was profoundly cunning. Yet, I think, in the 
hypothesis we have just offered of the cerebral 
activity of its author, he is fully answered. 

But I shall, nevertheless, endeavor to sup- 
ply what seems so necessary to our hero's hap- 
piness. And, since a new fact must be attend- 
ed with a miracle, I shall offer evidence of the 
existence of both at the same time. Indeed 
the nineteenth century fact and miracle that I 
am about to refer to, form a sort of mystic 
dualty — a one in two and two in one, as it 
were. And here it is : His Pseudolency him- 
self — Meph isto-Minota u 7' us. 

That the continued existence of this man is 
2. fact, no one will deny. That the continua- 
tion of that existence is the result of nothing 
less than a miracle, I will now demonstrate 
scientifically, by special method. 

Iva x\ yiko'.uv icTZU) xdi Tzepl yeAoiou TZpdyixazoq. 
Give me leave to be merry on a merry subject. 



76 ■ MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS. 

If we will turn, in the French Dictionaire 
de Medicirie, to the article entitled Combtcstio7i 
htcmaine, and in Dr. Apjon's Cyclopedia of 
Pi^actual Medicine, to the article entitled Sp07i- 
taneous human combustion, we can at once sat- 
isfy ourselves that the human body may under- 
go such excesses that, in process of time, de- 
composition will begin of a peculiar character, 
and to such an extent as to produce spon- 
taneous combustion, and this, too, in the midst 
of life. 

Now, I desire to make no allusion here to 
His Pseudolency's corporeal part — I am not 
his physician and could not, therefore, speak 
with accuracy — but to his spiritual part — his 
moral and mental being. 

It is a principle in science that wherever 
there is a close affinity between matter and 
mind, the laws pertaining to each bear an in- 
timate sympathy. This being the case, and 
our scientists having already discovered a law 
of spontaneous human combustion, it only 
remains a matter of time until they shall dis- 
cover a law of spontaneous mental and moral 



ANTICIPATING THE SCIENTISTS. J J 

combustion. I do not mean that there may 
be a total destruction of the moral and mental 
faculties, but a sort of disintegration, as it 
were, in which the impure parts will destroy 
themselves, — what little there is of any value 
taking its flight to the source from whence 
it came. 

We should not be compelled, in a case of 
emergency of this kind, to await the slow, plod- 
ding progress of the scientists, when so plain 
a deduction as this is before us, and it is just 
as well right here, that we anticipate the con- 
clusion to which they must inevitably come 
at last. 

It will readily be seen, then, that all that 
keeps the moral and mental parts of His Pseu- 
dolency from spontaneous combustion is a 
continual working miracle. 

For, as Mr. Carlyle said of him before he 
was born, ** Such a combination of logical life 
with moral death, so universal a denier, both 
in head and heart, is undoubtedly an emissary 
of the Primeval Nothing," and we may add, 
must be tor some wise and inscrutable purpose 



7 8 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

miraculously permitted an existence from day 
to day, since his continued intellectual life is 
in violation of every law in the reach of the 
scientists. 

Such an amalgamation of strength and stu- 
pidity, sense and sophistry, axiom and absurd- 
ity, intelligence and idiocy, acumen and arro- 
gance, genius and drivel, reason and ridicu- 
lousness, and then, notwithstanding his royal 
good-fellowship, such a compound of unblush- 
ing pretension, swaggering insolence, and blas- 
phemous sacrilege, as is evinced in the lecture 
before us ; in a word, such a mass of intellect- 
ual contradictions and moral corruption is an 
anomaly in the universe, beyond the pales of 
law, and can only be kept together — saved 
from spontaneous combustion — by the direct, 
daily, hourly interposition of miraculous 
power. 

His Pseudolency has, therefore, " a this 
year's fact," a walking, living, present evi- 
dence of "miracle." Requiescat in pace ! 

Why he is thus permitted, were a difficult 
problem ; I cannot solve it, unless the solu- 



A TALK TO OURSELVES. 79 

tion be that it is for a similar purpose to 
that for which we put a Hght-house on a 
dangerous coast ; that he is pei^mitted to 
warn others of that moral and mental de- 
struction that lurks beneath the waves of 
Infidelity. , 

I have endeavored to give a faithful review 
of every intended point in the lecture of " the 
gods," and this is the epitome of Mr. Inger- 
soll's philosophy. 

If anything has been omitted it is because 
it was too obscure for my comprehension. I 
have endeavored to say nothing to excite 
your prejudice, or to take advantage of the 
prejudice already existing against Infidels. I 
have sought to make an honorable fight of it, 
and if I may have used a little Greek-fire to 
meet the poisoned arrows of the enemy, I 
trust that the exigencies of war will justify 
me. 

And now let us have a little talk to our- 
selves. 

It is a sad truth that many /r^y^i'^^^^ Chris- 
tians come very far from bemg Christians. 



8o MRP HIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

Do you think that If every professed follower 
of Christ had been, Indeed, a h^ue and faith- 
ful follower of Christ, such a lecture as the 
one we have just reviewed would have ever 
been written ? 

Now, the Infiqjels watch the life of Chris- 
tians, and they say, that's Christianity; and 
they listen to our ministers, and say, that's 
Christian doctrine ; and they are often com- 
pelled to add : We don't want to emulate 
that kind of life, and It is impossible to be- 
lieve that kind of doctrine. 

Mr. Ingersoll makes some telling hits on 
many of our practices and much of our 
preaching, and there Is no use of shutting 
our eyes to the fact, and trying to drive 
away the remembrance by singing psalms. 

/ defy Infidelity to find a single fault in 
the teachings of Christ I They have been 
trying to do so for two thousand years and 
have not succeeded. It Is In the practices 
and preaching of those who claim to be Chris- 
tians that they find the fault. 

If there were nothing given to the Infidels 



THE CHRISTIAN WARFARE. 8 I 

to believe but the pure word of Christ, there 
would soon be no Infidels in the world. 

Now, the great trouble with many of our 
ministers is that the moment they take up a 
subject of theology, they lay down the practi- 
cal common-sense that governs them in every- 
day life, and the result is, their philosophy 
flies off in a thousand tangents. And they 
call this orthodoxy, and the Infidels say they 
don't want that sort of orthodoxy. 

And another trouble is, that when they be- 
come identified with some particular sect, 
they think they ought to cling to the ancient 
landmarks, no matter how inconsistent they 
may be, with the tenacity of life itself. Sup- 
pose our fathers had acted upon the same 
principle ! 

The Christian warfare will always be at- 
tended with difficulties so long as we furnish 
the cudgels for Infidels to batter us over the 
heads with. 

I can recognize no excuse for poor preach- 
ing. Oh, what a theme is Christianity , What 
has it not done for this world 1 



8 2 MEPHIS TO-MTNO TA UR US. 

It found anarchy and barbarism ; it has be- 
stowed order and enhghtenment. 

It found groveling ignorance and supersti- 
tion ; it has bestowed knowledge and philos- 
ophy. 

It found man a vassal and slave; it has 
lifted him to a peerage with gods ! 

It found woman a menial and concubine ; 
it has lifted her to the sphere of angels ! 

Do you point me to the achievements of 
the nations before Christ ; their wondrous 
proficiency in the arts and sciences ? 

I will point you to the wreck and ruin of 
it all. Do you ask why 1 Time has written 
the answer. 

Christianity found the human race unable 
to rise from the miry clay, staggering and 
blinded and bewildered, through the horror- 
strewn gorges of Polytheism ; through the 
caverns of Doubt and Denial ; through the 
unillumined defiles of a terrible Dread, grop- 
ing, groping in the deep, dark valley, sur- 
rounded by the ghastly specters of the skel- 
etoned past, while Death, brooding like a 



THE MARCH OF ENLIGHTENMENT. 83 

monster vampire over the world, cast every- 
where its terrible shadow ! 

But when the chorus rang out on the world 
— " Peace ! peace on earth, good will to men," 
our poor humanity took heart. 

Slowly and steadily we have marched 
through all the centuries ; slowly but surely, 
step by step, mounting the stair of Christ's 
enlightenment. 

And now, where once the trackless ocean 
rolled, and unknown seas kissed back the sun, 
commerce sits smiling in a million sails ! 

And now, where once was howling wilder- 
ness and waste, a million fields glow with the 
golden grain ! a million homes crown life with 
happiness ! 

And now, where once were unknown haunts 
of savage beasts, railroads, the swift arteries 
of trade, like a broad net-work spread, and the 
chained lightnings, girt about the globe, serve 
everywhere men's purposes ! The, land is 
decked with cities, and the land is jeweled 
over with churches and with schools ! 

Nay, we have mounted far beyond these 



8 4 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

scenes! Behold! where gleam the countless 
stars, there stretch the highways of all-con- 
quering science ! 

And now, where once were unknown heights, 
and depths profound, are paths wherein we 
stroll as erstwhile through our gardens ! 

Where once were grotesque shapes and 
heathen deities, now, through the illimitable 
space, roll worlds Innumerable ! And these 
we measure, weigh and analyze, delve in their 
mines, explore their mountains and plains, 
bask in the light of their resplendent suns, 
and dally with their gorgeous, tinted beams ! 

And soon our souls shall listen to their 
sw^eet, celestial harmonies ! 

For In the center of this universe is throned 
our God, whence time, as a gentle effluence, is 
shed through all the worlds ! 

'Twas He who sent to us His Son, that He 
might lift us up unto Himself And He has 
sworn, even by Himself, since He could by no 
greater swear, with His great arm uplifted, 
that He will do it ! Hie et ubique ! Yes, 
here and everyw^here ! Here^ on this beautiful 



THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL. 85 

bright earth, or in the Pleiades ! Here, with 
the loved ones of our hearts, or there, where 
they shall come to us ! 

Stand out, oh Infidel, beneath the stars ! 
Look up ! and when your soul throbs wildly 
to be free, — throbs till your heart leaps madly 
in your breast, — throbs till your brain reels, 
and your whole being quakes, — stifle all 
thought, — quell every impulse, — confront your 
soul, — declare to it there is no God, — then 
hear its swift, wild screaming latcghter, — 
endure its loathing, mocking, terrible recoil 
as it shall answer back, " Thou Fool ! " 

To your knees, and crawl for pardon ! For 
I tell thee now, thou rash destroyer of thy 
soul's dear peace, unless thou shalt its quick 
forgiveness gain, 'twill hunt thee down ! 

With sting of thousand scorpions thy con- 
science will so lash thee through the world, 
thou shalt seek refuge in the very jaws of 
death ! Aye, and beyond the tomb ; for there, 
all dwarfed and maimed, it shall confront 
thee ! Even as thou hast dwarfed and 
maimed it here, 'twill meet thee there, con- 



8 6 ME PHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 

front thee face to face ! Thou shalt stand 
self-accused, self-judged, and go self-haunted 
through eternity ! 

For who can escape the presence of his 
soul ? 



THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 



The man who in this life can keep the whiteness of his soul 
is not likely to lose it in any other. 

Alexander Smith. 

Truth came once into the world with her Divine Master, 
and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look on; but when 
He ascended, and His Apostles after him were laid asleep, then 
straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as the story goes 
of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt 
with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely 
form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four 
winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, 
such as durst appear, imitating the carefuk search that Isis 
made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down 
gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We 
have not vet found them all, nor ever shall do, till her Master's 
second coming: He shall bring together every joint and mem- 
ber, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of Loveli- 
ness and Perfection. 

Milton. 



THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 



It shall be my endeavor in the present pa- 
per to confine what shall be offered to very 
simple, plain, old-fashioned, hard-fisted facts, 
and their logical deductions. And if, in doing 
so, we shall let a little light into the labyrinth- 
ine mysteries of some of the popular the- 
ologies, and, by that light, discover that those 
dark passages may, after all, be explored, and 
even by very ordinary people like ourselves, 
let us evermore hold in higher regard those 
simple truths that are in the reach of all, though 
it should be at the expense of that reverence 
which we mav have hitherto borne for the in- 
fallibility of some of our teachers. 

And now let us try to divest ourselves of all 
preconceived ideas that may have become a 
part of our mental being through early train- 
ing or past associations, — all prejudices, so to 
speak, that may enswathe us, and upon truths 



4" 



90 



THE ABSOLUTE XECESSITIES. 



that we know to be truths — plain, practicable, 
common-sense principles of every-day life — 
consider the grave question before us, for 
" to this complexion mjcst we come at last!' 

Were we to seek for the cause of the un- 
fortunate tendency of the human mind, partic- 
ularly as applied to Christians, to veil every- 
thing in mystery, we should, no doubt, find it 
very largely attributable to a misconstruction 
of the idea that lingers around those words 
of Holy Writ, " Great are the mysteries of 
godliness." The inspired writer might have 
added, " Great are the mvsteries of orerminal 
life," but it is, no doubt, well he did not do so, 
else who knows but that our agriculturists 
would now be exhausting themselves in an ef- 
fort to raise corn in the hot sands of Arabia, 
or on the snow-capped summits of the Alps. 

Because there are great mysteries connected 
with the raising of corn, it does not follow that 
there are not many simple, practical truths 
leading to the raising of corn. And because 
there are great mysteries connected with god- 
liness, it does not follow that there are not 



TF^UTHS WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL. 91 

many simple, practical truths leading to god- 
liness. Nor does it follow that because there 
must forever remain many unsolved problems 
in eternity, that there are not many simple, 
practical truths in connection with that future 
state that are within the reach of every rational 
mind. 

Now, for some little time let us confine our 
arguments to limits that will not touch the 
Christian system, or the relationship of Christ 
to humanity. Let us advance to the consider- 
ation of that thought, that sublime climax of 
philosophy, by gradual approach, each step of 
which shall be as sure as the very foundation 
of science. We should do this for two rea- 
sons : 

First. That we may throw some light upon 
that part of our question which sgems to per- 
plex some of our theologians, and that so 
greatly disturbed Mr. Beecher : the condition 
of the millions who lived and died before the 
Christian era. 

Second. That what we shall offer may reach 
those who do not accept Christ. 



92 



THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 



Before taking up our subject from a purely 
scientific standpoint, let us seek to reduce it 
to practical proportions, and consider it from 
a practical standpoint by making a personal 
application of it. 

We will for the present use the words, 
Heaven, Hell, Saved and Lost, in their popu- 
lar significance, reserving the privilege of sup- 
plying what we conceive to be their proper 
definitions after a while. 

I desire now to address the one reader 
whose eye may be resting upon this page, for 
it is not probable that there is a single indi- 
vidual on the habitable globe but who feels 
that by some means he or she VA'ill be saved. 
Indeed it is hardly possible that there could 
be found a single instance of one so devoid 
of hope as to believe that he would be lost — 
that would be despair. Though unable to 
give a reason for the faith that is within, all 
feel that, by some means, a way will be pro- 
vided through which they will be led to a final 
state of happiness. 

It is not proposed, at this point, to discuss 



WHAT SORT OF HE A VEN. 93 

any doctrines as to qualifications yi?r, or to dic- 
tate any peculiar individual conception of, 
heaven. But accepting, in order to pursue 
the argument, any rational conception you 
may have of heaven, and accepting the idea 
of that unbounded goodness of God which 
presupposes that He would draw all men unto 
Himself, — all this conceded, is your case a 
possible one ? What sort of a heaven would 
be required to make you happy ? You can- 
not conceive of heaven as other than a state 
of purity of soul, where only the highest, holi- 
est aspirations may exist, no matter what 
other peculiarities you may ally to it, — would 
such surroundings make you happy ? Were 
you at once translated from your present 
abode into the presence of God and His 
holy angels, could you even endure it ? 

What sort of a heaven would it take to 
satisfy that man whose soul only knows the 
greed of gain ? 

What sort of a heaven would it be wherein 
one could feel at home whose chief delight is 
in telling or listening to obscene jests ? 



94 'THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

What sort of a heaven would be required 
for one whose Ufe is given to the continual 
gratification of lust ? 

You will say, at once, that no one embraced 
in these extreme cases is a fit subject for 
the presence of God. And a question arises : 
What sort of a presence is he fitted for ? 

How a man can hope for even respectable 
existence in eternity who allows all manner of 
unworthy thoughts to take possession of his 
being ; who permits impurity, with its loath- 
some associates, to hold a continual high car- 
nival in his soul, is certainly a mystery. 

But there are those who believe in a sort of 
purgatorial repair shop, to work souls over. 
I do not refer to the Roman Catholics, who 
have reduced the idea of Purgatory to some- 
thing less than a science, but to those who 
have a feeling that there will be some kind of 
purifying process between death and eternity. 
We will be as generous to these as we were 
to the others by conceding their premise as 
a starting-point. It will, then, be admitted, 
in return, that there are souls so utterly de- 



LOSS OF I DEN TIT r IS ANNIHILATION 



95 



praved, whom to fit for any rational view of 
heaven would require an entire destruction 
of identity. Would not this be equivalent to 
annihilation ? If, to fit you for God's pres- 
ence, it becomes necessary to make an en- 
tirely new being, it would not be you who 
would enjoy the heaven, but another — the 
one newly created. 

Well, if this is true in an entire destruction 
of identity, it must still remain true in a par- 
tial destruction of identity ; for since entire 
destruction of identity would be equivalent 
to annihilation, partial destruction of identity 
would be equivalent to partial annihilation, 
which is one of the impossibilities. 

Let us see if this cannot be made plainer. 

Suppose that, in disobedience to physical 
law, I should thrust my arm under the wheels 
of a railway engine while it is in motion, my 
arm would be crushed ; suppose a surgeon, 
to save the rest of my body, should cut the 
arm off; suppose I should supply its place 
with a cork arm ; I should not then be the 
same man physically, but something more 



96 THE ABSOL UTE NECESSITIES. 

than three-fourths of my original self. Sup- 
pose, then, I should lose a leg in a similar 
way, and I should supply its place in a like 
manner ; I should then be a little more than 
half of my former self, physically. Where 
would the parts be that were cut away ? De- 
stroyed 1 No ; but returned to the elements 
whence they came originally, for they are 
indestructible. 

Suppose that this process should go on ; 
you can see that I should be all cork, or an 
entirely new physical being. 

Well, after the process was over, which 
would be the man with which we started ? 
The cork, or those parts that had returned 
to the elements ? 

Now the purgatorial repair shop theory is 
founded upon an idea that the soul may be 
worked over until it shall be fitted for heaven. 
Granting the premise and conclusion, I should 
like to know what becomes of the parts that 
are cut away. Remember they are indestruc- 
tible. And if a soul quit this life all dwarfed 
to the proportions of the hideous deformity 



A THOUGHT FROM NATURE. 97 

of sin, by what process could it be developed 
into an acceptable guest at the court of angels 
except by cutting away the deformed parts so 
as to have purity to build upon ? 

Let us see if this part of the issue may not 
be met by pure, scientific method, confining 
ourselves to the simplest possible thoughts 
and language, and the purest metaphysics. 

We will consider a thought from the ma- 
terial world, the world of matter, and one that 
we may demonstrate without the aid of the 
scientists or theologians. Indeed, we shall be 
quite as well off without the assistance of 
either of these in this, for the former might 
lose us in the labyrinthine depths of their 
philosophies, and the latter — well, they are in 
a very unsteady state of mind just at present. 

Take a piece of polished marble, but scratch 
it with a needle and you will have affected it 
forever. All the ages of time to come, all the 
cycles of eternity, cannot undo what you have 
do?ie. 

True, the scratch may be cut away, and the 
surface of the stone may be polished again 



98 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

until it shall again become beautiful, but it is 
at the cost of fjtaterial ! The stone can never 
be restored to its original proportions. And 
just in proportion as that piece of marble is 
affected, whether by the scratch of a needle, 
the chisel of the sculptor, or the upheaval of 
a volcano, just to that degree will the effect 
that is wrought upon it attend it through " the 
wreck of matter and the crush of worlds." 

Now, I hold that a sin, absolute, however 
small, makes an impress on the soul that is 
eternal in its consequences. 

It may be cut away, through forgiveness, 
and the soul may be perfected by after-life, 
but there is a loss that may never be re- 
covered. And I think this is incontrovertible. 
Why? Because there are two things which 
no one will deny, and which no one can deny ; 
and those two things are : 
First. No one will deny, or can deny, that a 

life of continual sin dwarfs the soul until 

its possibilities in the future state must be 

greatly limited. 
Second. No one will deny, or can deny, that 



THE L OGICA L DED UC TION. g g 

this comes not in the continuation, for that 
is without quality, but in the sin. By con- 
tinuation comes that enormity of proportion 
which makes the effect possible to our per- 
ception — the sin of a moment being the 
same in its effect upon the soul with the 
difference only of degree ; and just in pro- 
portion as a soul is dwarfed by sin in this 
life, just to that degree are its possibilities 
limited in the life to come. 
(A stain or soil upon the marble, to con- 
tinue the figure, may be washed away without 
impairing the proportions of the stone, and 
there are some offenses ofttimes reckoned sins 
because of their sinful nature, which but stain 
or soil the soul, and of these may the soul be 
cleansed.) 

That the future existence of the soul will be 
surrounded by scenes subject to conditions 
and capable of possibilities immeasurably be- 
yond its present highest conceptions, is, to 
my mind, as certain as that the infinite is be- 
yond the finite ; bitt that it will be in the precise 
line, or direction, ^its aspirations here, seems 



lOO THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

to me necessary to the deduction, if it remain 
logical. 

Now, I desire to call your attention to the 
following universally accepted truth : 

There are but two states of existence — the 
here and the hereafter, of time and eternity. 
And I think that we have demonstrated that 
just as we quit this life we shall begin the next. 
I say I think we have demonstrated this to be 
one of the absolute necessities, for anv con- 
elusion different from this must be upon the 
theory of annihilation, which is one of the im- 
possibilities. 

There is another conclusion in connection 
with the future state that follows from the 
foregoing arrangement of very simple truths, 
it is this : There are grades or degrees in the 
future state. Besides, this is clearlv tauofht in 
the Bible, and is, I believe, almost universally 
acknowledged. Now, just one item more, 
right here : Nothing can be surer than that 
where there is no law there can be no trans- 
gression. 

The nations, therefore, that lived before the 



BEECHER-MANIA. lOI 

comlno^ of Christ could not be amenable to 
the law of Christ which w^as made by Christ, 
and of necessity, after His coming. 

It will require no very great amount of 
mental acumen to see, therefore, that the in- 
habitants of the world, prior to the Christian 
era, were only subject to the conditions we 
have already mentioned, i. e., they began the 
new life in eternity at the precise point that 
they ended the old, on earth, save that there 
possibilities became infinite, while here they 
were finite. 

How Mr. Beecher could become so greatly 
excited, as will appear from the quotation we 
will give here, over a question that is so en- 
tirely beyond all rational controversy is, in- 
deed, remarkable to an extent that becomes 
incomprehensible to me, upon any hypothesis 
that would be creditable to a master. 

Surely there has been nothing very pro- 
found in the simple thoughts we have offered 
so far, and yet, had they been comprehended 
in their simplicity by Mr. Beecher, he could 
have lifted the veil from the great mystery, 



I02 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

the very contemplation of which almost de- 
throned his reason, and threw him into such 
paroxysms of rhetorical inaccuracy. 
' It becomes necessary to quote him here, 
that we may not be misunderstood. We shall 
take occasion to refer to a passage that comes 
before this, after a while ; why I do not take 
them as they come is because Mr. Beecher's 
erraticisms are secondary considerations to the 
argument. I am trying to solve the problem 
which is popularly denominated Heaven and 
Hell, or the future state, simply disposing 
of Beecher-mania as a sort of unknown 
quantity wherever it presents itself 

In quoting from Mr. Beecher we are but 
quoting the words of a large element of relig- 
ious and irreligious society, and the thoughts 
they suggest are, therefore, by no means 
ephemeral. 

Referring to the nations before the coming 
of Christ, he says : 

"If now you tell me that this great mass of 
men, because they had not the knowledge of 
God, went to heaven, I say the inroad of such 



MR. BEECHER VERSUS HELL. 1 03 

a vast amount of mud swept into heaven 
would be destructive of its purity, and I can- 
not accept that view. 

" If, on the other hand, you say they went to 
hell, then you make an Infidel of me. For I 
do swear" (we will omit the oaths, — Mr. 
Beecher says the reporters were guilty of a — 
mistake here, that he did not swear. At all 
events Mr. Beecher shall be allowed to 
amend). Suffice it that the sentence which 
follows makes Mr. Beecher very emphatically 
reject the idea that they went to hell. He 
fails, however, to tell us where they did go to. 
Perhaps, according to Beecher-mania, they just 
went out — vanished, you know, — evaporated, 
so to speak — that is, they were not, as it 
were. 

He continues : " Tell me that back of 
Christ there is a God, who for unnumbered 
centuries has gone on creating men and sweep- 
ing them like dead flies — nay, living ones — 
into hell, is to ask me to worship a being as 
much worse than the conception of any 
mediaeval devil as can be imagined, but I will 



I04 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

not worship the devil though he should come 
and sit on the throne of Jehovah." 

Well, who tells him of such a God ? Or 
who asks him to worship such a being? Not 
the Bible! Not Christ! Not Christianity! 
Who then ? 

Ever since one brave soldier hurled his 
battle flag right into the midst of the pha- 
lanxes of the enemy, and then, leading on his 
comrades to the rescue, overthrew the armies 
opposed to him, quite a num.ber of other brave 
fellows have tried the same experiment and 
come out minus a flaor. And thouorh no one 
will dispute the dauntless courage of the Gen- 
eral of the Plymouth forces, and even accord 
to him all the qualities of a brave soldier, 
which I am told sometimes includes profanity 
in the heat of action, still there will, no doubt, 
be found many who will question his qualities 
as a commander, for we find that, having 
hurled his banner into the ranks of the enemy, 
his battalions were not equal to the emergen- 
cy of rescuing it. W^hat he may accomplish 
when he brings up his reserves remains a 



T1VO ERRORS. IO5 

question of the future, and in the meantime 
the flag Is with the enemy. 

If Col. Ingersoll does not flaunt that ban- 
ner from the flagstaff of InfideHty for some 
time to come, I shall be greatly surprised. 

Mr. Beecher and Mr. Ingersoll and the host 
of other . sympathetic natures whom Mr. 
Beecher's words here represent, are possessed 
of two errors that have been quite common to 
such noble natures for more than a century. 
They are these : 

First. Accepting what the commentators 
say of the Bible instead of what the Bible 
says Itself. And 

Second. Permitting their imaginations In- 
stead of their judgments to take command 
of their sympathies. 

The first argues much for their faith in 
humanity, the second for their goodness . of 
heart ; and yet it is hardly safe to say that 
either is an evidence of those qualities we 
should expect to find in the leaders of a great 
people. 

As I have said, a complete solution of Mr. 



I06 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

Beecher's problem may be had by substituting 
the known for his unknown quantity. So far 
I have sought to confine the argument to the 
plainest truths and purest logic. 

The peoples who lived and died before the 
Christian era went into the same eternity 
that we are destined to enter, and subject to 
the only possible differeace of condition which 
has been Avrought by and through Christ. 

But leaving the relation which Christ bears 
to the question until it shall take its place, 
we will consider humanity as subject to the 
law of the absolute necessities : a law co- 
existent with every atom of matter, or pulse 
of mental being. 

And now, under this law, let us follow the 
primitive rdiC^s into eternity; let us see what 
disposition was made of them there, and we 
shall learn something, though not entirely, of 
the disposition that will be made of all who 
refuse to accept Christ. 

Was there any hell awaiting them there ? 
Was there any heaven awaiting them there 7 
Yes, both ! What kind of hell and what 



HEAVEN AND HELL CO-EXISTENT. IQJ 

kind of heaven ? The same kmds that await 
you and me. But must hell exist eternally ? 
As surely as heaven shall. Do you mean to 
say that a sin committed in this life will be 
punished throughout eternity ? As surely as 
that a righteous act will be rewarded through- 
out eternity. Is this the law of a God of love ? 
Yes, for it is the law <?/ being — the law neces- 
sary to being — the only law by which being 
could be made possible I It is the law of the 
absolute necessities ! 

Let us see if this can be demonstrated. 
In my review of Mr. Ingersoll it was con- 
ceded that we established two propositions, 
which were as follows : 

First. There is not an ato7n in the physical 
universe which is absolute, i. e., entirely in- 
dependent of all other atoms. 
Second. There is not a condition in the spirit- 
ual universe which is absolute, i. e., entirely 
independent of all other conditions. 
Now if those two propositions are true 
(and, as I say, it was admitted that we proved 
them to be true), it matters little whether 



I08 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

heaven or hell be places or conditions, so 

far as the argument to prove their eternal 

duration is concerned, since, in either case, a 

neither is absolute. And so, though I cannot 1 

do violence to my sense of consistent logic by 

discussing either heaven or hell as 2.. place, 

still it will be seen that what I may offer 

touching both, considered as conditions, will 

apply as forcibly to both, considered as places. 

I think it w^ill be admitted, without areu- 

<_> 

ment, that there are but two conditions in 
the spiritual universe — Heaven and Hell — 
though there may be some difference of opin- 
ion as to degrees pertaining to each, possibly 
of climate, etc. ; but there can be no discus- 
sion on the original proposition, that there are 
but the two conditions. 

The correct definitions of the words heaven 
and hell — or, perhaps, I should say what I 
conceive to be the correct definitions — may 
serve us here. By heaven, then, I would im- 
ply the degrees of happiness, and by hell the 
degrees of unhappiness, that pertain to eter- 
nity. 



HOME^, PLATO, PAUL, B EEC HER. 1 09 

Well, if there are but two conditions in the 
spiritual universe, Heaven and Hell, and if, as 
we have shown, there is no such possibility as 
an absolute condition ; or, in other words, an 
entirely independent condition, each must bear 
a relation to the other, since there is nothing 
else to which it can bear a relation. 

What, then, follows from this? 

Why, that all souls must go into the same 
eternity ; that each soul must be subject to 
one of the two conditions <9/that eternity, and, 
if subject to one, its possibilities must reach 
to the other ; or, in other words, every soul 
must begin the new life at just that step on 
the stair of development for which it has 
fitted itself in this life ; whether it be the soul 
of Homer, of Plato, of the Apostle Paul, or of 
Henry Ward Beecher ; whether it was fitted 
through the genius of poetry, of philosophy, 
or of Christianity, or of two of these, or of all 
combined. And this includes all who have 
lived, or ever will live, on the globe. 

Well, after they begin the eternal life, then 
what ? 



I lo THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

A little while ago, the question was asked : 
"Must hell exist eternally?" and answered, 
" As surely as that heaven shall." 

Immediately after, another question was 
asked : " Do you mean to say that a sin 
committed in this life will be punished 
throughout eternity ? " and answered : '' As 
surely as that a righteous act will be reward- 
ed throughout eternity." 

Now, while I hold that we have already 
sustained those answers, or, rather, that they 
become axiomatic in the light of the princi- 
ples we have established, I will proceed, not- 
withstanding, to make them plainer. 

We will begin by asking, What is sin ? and 
all will at once answer: Sin is the transgres- 
sion of moral law. Another question : Why 
do men sin in this life 1 We shall, no doubt, 
agree that the answer to this is : Because they 
do not rightly estimate the terrible conse- 
quences of sin. It is entirely safe to assume 
that if men could foresee the terrible conse- 
quences of sin they would shun every form of 
sin, as they now shun every form of plague. 



MORAL AND PHTSICAL LAW. Ill 



To illustrate : a man does not transgress '^^ 
the law of physical being by putting his hand 
in the fire, because he knows, if he does, his 




hand will burn. And it would be just so in<^^^^ 
regard to the law of moral being if he as fully 5^„^. 
realized the certain effects that are sure to 
follow certain causes. 

Another thought here. It is through sin 
that we sink dowm on the stair of moral be- 
ing, and it is through righteousness that we 
rise up on the stair of moral being. All this, 
so far, will be conceded. 

Well, in eternity we shall know the effect 
of every moral law, just as well as we know 
the effect here of that physical law that if we 
put our hand in the fire the hand must burn. 
Consequently, no one will sin, all will gradu- 
ally rise higher on the stair of development 
in proportion to his moral capacity. 

One more thouofht : Nothinof can be surer 
than that there can be no final landing to the 
stair of development in eternity — it must be 
an eternal development — it must be infinite 
in its possibilities. There is no level of 



112 THE ABSOL UTE NECESSITIES, 

achieved pre-eminence here, and there can 
be none there, A fixed state or condition of 
happiness, however exalted, would be destruc- 
tive of the very idea of happiness. Confine a 
man to the limits of a palace, though it be 
ever so grand, and it would soon become a 
prison ; confine a soul to the limits of a single 
star, though it be the greatest of the constel- 
lations, and existence would soon become un- 
endurable. 

The words heaven and hell, as usually 
defined, must inevitably confuse us. There 
can be no such possibility as a fixed state in 
eternity ; and, as we have shown, the soul in 
eternity can only be subject to the possibili- 
ties of a higher development. 

The doctrine that all will finally be " saved," 
or go to heaven, is as illogical as that all 
will finally be " lost," or go to hell. Either 
is impossible. 

No doubt, we should all agree were it not 
for the confusion of words ! 

Let us now select from the illustrious names 
of the past, Milton, Procrustes and Caligula, 



MILTON, PROCRUSTES, CALIGULA. 113 

three characters with whom we are all fa- 
miliar. 

And let us, for convenience, illustrate the 
moral differences between them as so much 
time. We will suppose that these began their 
earth lives with equal opportunities for moral 
development ; and that each was, therefore, 
alike responsible for his status when he 
passed into eternity. 

We will say that Milton's moral attainments 
were such that when he passed the portals of 
death and entered into eternal life, he was a 
thousand years beyond Procrustes on the stair 
of development, and that, for like reasons, Pro- 
crustes was a thousand years beyond Caligula. 

Now, none of us believe that the future 
state will be an idle, do-nothing one : no 
doubt we shall all a^ree that it must be an 
active, progressive one. 

Well, these three begin in eternity with these 
relative differences between them. 

You will at once see the justice that puts 
Milton beyond Procrustes, and Procrustes be- 
yond such a man as Caligula. You will say 



114 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

it is but a mete reward — an equitable adjust- 
ment — the jiLstice of which each will himself 
acknowledge. You will say that anything 
less than this would not be in keeping with 
the eternal love and justice of God. You will 
say that anything less than this would be an 
outrage upon the simplest principles of equity. 
Everybody would say so ; Christians, Infidels, 
Pagans, the very savages of the deserts and 
wildernesses, would say so ; the sunbeam that 
quickens the perfect before the imperfect grain 
of corn would say so ; the dew that kisses 
the one before the other has peeped above its 
earth-bed would say so ; the zephyr that plays 
through its brighter, stronger, nobler blades 
would say so ; and the husbandman who 
gathers the fruit of the one into his garner, 
and casts the other away, would say so ; all 
heaven and earth, and the things that are 
under the earth, would say so. 

And all these would say that it was but just 
and equitable that each should occupy his 
position of relative superiority throughout 
eternity ; since, whenever that should cease. 



REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. \ 15 

equity would cease and justice would cease, 
and, consequently, love, that rewards the 
good, would cease. 

Surely we can all agree in this. But do 
you not see that what is Milton's reward 
becomes Procrustes' punishment ? and that 
what is Procrustes' reward becomes Calig- 
ula's punishment, and so on down the scale 
of being ? 

It is Milton's punishment that he is a thou- 
sand years beneath what he might have been, 
and it is Procrustes' punishment that he is a 
thousand years beneath Milton, and it is Ca- 
ligula's punishment that he is a thousand years 
beneath Procrustes ; and if there is any poor 
wretch lower in the scale of being than Ca- 
ligula he must be near the utterly deepest 
bottom of perdition. 

And since those relative positions must be 
maintained throughout eternity, as each rises 
up on the stair of development, rewards and 
punishments must continue throughout eter- 
nity, and it is simply impossible that one can 
continue without the continuance of the other. 



Il6 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

The absolute necessities demand that it must 
be so I For the only possible difference be- 
tween Good and Bad, Pure and Impure, Wise 
and Unwise, Strength and Weakness, Day and 
Night, Happiness and Unhappiness, Heaven 
and Hell, and everything in God's universe, 
is a comparative difference ! 

But do you make heaven and hell to oc- 
cupy the same space? Yes and No. Yes, 
since they will occupy the same eternity. No, 
since the pure and the impure will not be 
found together. And this law is in harmony 
with the moral law of society on our own 
little planet. 

In regard to our first answer, "Yes," let me 
ask the question : Is there more than one 
eternity 1 Surely not. Well, where would 
you draw a line through space 1 How build 
a wall in ether .^ 

Again : Is not God omnipresent } The Bible 
and your catechisms, and the scientists and 
everybody else says He is, and you will have 
to answer yes along with them. Now, do you 
not see that you cannot have a separate place 



BIBLE PICTURE OF HELL. 



117 



for hell ? for God must be there and every- 
where if He is omnipresent. 

What, then, follows from this ? Why, that 
heaven and hell are but conditions of the 
same eternity. 

Now, in regard to our second answer, " No," 
let me ask the question : What is more repel- 
lent to a good and pure man or woman than 
the society of the corrupt and wicked ? or 
what is more repellent to a corrupt and 
wicked man or woman than the society of 
the good and pure ? Here, in Chicago, you 
have your churches and a society of pure 
men and women ; you have also your slums 
of vice and their pitiable inmates, — do these 
divisions of society mix together ? 

In eternity, every soul that is dwarfed or 
maimed by sin or impurity will be recognized 
as readily as a dwarfed or maimed body is rec- 
ognized on earth, and they will shrink from 
the eye of the pure, and call upon the moun- 
tains to bury them from the eye of God. 

But will the sorrows of hell be as terrible as 
the Bible depicts them ? This is a horrible 



Il8 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

thought, and yet one that every man can 
answer for himself. 

The scientists and philosophers will tell 
you that the suffering of the body is slight 
when compared to the suffering of the mind. 
— A strong willed soldier, once, amputated 
his own limb, and then seared the bleeding, 
sensitive wound with a red hot gun barrel, 
and so stopped the effusion of blood and 
recovered. Years after, he struck down his 
brother, in anger, and the. brother died — and 
the soldier died of revtorse ! He could en- 
dure the amputation of his own limb, and 
endure the torture of the seething iron, 
burning into his quivering flesh, but he 
could not endure the remorse that followed 
his sin. 

Show me the Bible's picture of hell, and I 
will show you a soul haunted by itself through 
eternity with remorse proportioned to its 
crimes. What is lost through sin, though it 
be but a loss of time, can never be recovered. 

When Mr. Beecher talks about " the inroad 
of that vast amount of mud swept into 



PULPIT METAPHOR. 



119 



heaven as destructive of its purity," and when 
he talks about " sweeping them like dead flies 
— nay living ones — into hell," he indulges 
in a metaphor that out-Ingersolls Ingersoll, 
nay out-Beechers Beecher. It is without 
parallel even in the long record of Plymouth's 
erratic pastor, or in the annals of our primi- 
tive western eloquence, or yet in the pristine 
purity of plantation pulpit philology. 

It becomes necessary to quote from Mr. 
Beecher, again, for he again represents a 
large element of society in the position he 
assumes. But it is hard to believe that a 
man who has stood at the head and front 
of American moral philosophers so long, 
coidd say what he does, even with the record 
before us. He says : 

"Now, that the race should be put in this 
world at so low a point would not be strange, 
any more than it is strange that a man cuts a 
little twig off from a rose-bush, and puts it 
in a thumb-pot one inch across, and sets it on 
a table in a propagating house, with bottom 
heat, if the moral problem were the same as 



I 20 THE ABSOL UTE NECESSITIES. 

the physical one — where there is the instru- 
mentaHty for germinating the twig, where 
there is a gardener to care for it, to shift it, to 
develop it, to give it room and opportunity 
for growth and maturity. 

" But that has not been the history of the 
human race. Mankind are thrown abroad on 
this continent in myriads, and we know that 
not only their happiness but their morality 
largely depends on their knowledge of how to 
use their bodies, and how to control the nat- 
ural laws that surround them ; but on these 
subjects not a word nor a syllable is told 
them." 

If the old Testament tells us anything, it 
tells us that from the time man was cut from 
the original bush and placed in the thumb- 
pot of Eden, to the dawn of the Christian era, 
the great Gardener of the universe took the 
tenderest care of him, shifted him, straight- 
ened him, and gave him every opportunity for 
growth and development. And you know 
this is so, and I know this is so, and every 
reader of that Old Testament knows it is so. 



MR. BEECHER'S MA THEM A TICS. I 2 I 

And we know, besides, that, perhaps, there 
never was a plant that gave a gardener so 
much trouble. And we are Inclined to think 
that we have a forcible illustration of what 
that original plant was In the erratic pastor of 
Plymouth Church. 

Mr. Beecher continues : 

" The sweep of the populations that have 
swarmed on the globe is simply inconceiv- 
able. ... Not all the waves of the ocean 
that have beaten on its shores during all the 
centuries of time contained drops enough. 
. . . Not all the sands of the sea-shore, all 
the stars of heaven and .all the figures of 
arithmetic." — Well, we haven't time to com- 
pute It, you know, — "and during three fourths 
of its history the race was without an altar, 
or a church, or an authorized priest, a reve- 
lation, or anything but the light of nature." 

Now, when Mr. Beecher antedates so, in 
order to sustain his mathematics, what can 
he know about " three-fourths " of those pre- 
historic times ? or one-fourth, or, indeed, any 
part except what the Old Testament speaks 



1 2 2 THE ABS OL Ul 'E NECESSI TIES. 

of? He is dealing here very vigorously in 
assertions. There is a bound even to poetic 
pastures, beyond which are the fields called 
pure fiction. 

" Ever to that truth, 
Which but the semblance of a falsehood wears, 
A man, if possible, should bar his lip." 

Dante's Ii/Jcnio, Canto J^VI. 

Well, how does Mr. Beecher reconcile the 
terrible state of things he depicts here ? 

Why, after sleepless nights and throes of 
agony, amidst grave doubts and graver re- 
sponsibilities, and visions of reformers pelted 
and beaten, and visions of the persecutions of 
advanced thinkers, — after all this and much 
more of like character, descriptive of the labor 
of the mountain, behold the twin thoughts 
that are brought forth : '' God's ways are not 
our ways," and, " What is time with us is not 
time with God," — two old theological saws 
that have ruined work wherever they have 
been used ; two answers that have made 
more infidels than Mr. Beecher has hairs in 
his venerable head. And yet if you will boil 
down Mr. Beecher's answers, and let the 



FROM A SCIENTIFIC STANDPOINT. 



123 



rhetorical steam evaporate, this is all you 
will have left. And I quote these answers 
not in irreverence to their great author, but 
because they are fair samples of many of 
the answers that have been given on one 
side of this question, and are only matched, 
I think, by the entire negation of the infidels 
on the other side. 

If you please, we will now take up the 
theory of creation, the law of being, and dis- 
cuss it from the scientific standpoint. I de- 
sire, as the first step, to lay down what I 
conceive to be three incontrovertible prop- 
ositions ; three propositions that become ax- 
iomatic when viewed in the light of pure 
philosophy and reason. They are as follows: 
First. There is but 07te, and there could by 

no possibility be more than 07ie, universe. 
Second. There is but one, and there could by 

no possibility be more than one, set of 

laws for that one universe. 
Third. Every law of that one universe must 

be in perfect harmony with every other 

law of that one universe. 



124 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

Here, then, we have struck three bed-rock 
truths of both science and philosophy. In- 
fidels, Christians, everybody, — Huxley, Tyn- 
dall, Baine, Ingersoll, Beecher, Prof. Swing, 
the Apostle Paul, everybody, — -will indorse 
these. So far we are all agreed. And now let 
us keep our minds free from all entangling 
alliances, and all special theories, for a little 
while. And please do not anticipate what is 
coming ! 

I shall not lead you into any of the old 
paths. I am wedded to no sect, no school of 
metaphysics or theology, and I shall only ask 
that you shall not be for the little while that 
remains to us. I am merely an earnest, and, 
I trust, honest seeker for truth, and I propose 
to follow the straight path of pure logic wher- 
ever it shall lead me, beginning with these 
three facts we have before us — these three 
incontrovertible truths. And if we do this 
it is impossible that we should go wrong. 
But we must not swerve from the straight 
line, — no, not the breadth of ahair. Though 
old familiar forms and faces, that have been 



THE LOGICAL PATH. I 25 

the companions of other days, shall beckon 
us from either side, aye, though they may 
have been our school-fellows, or may have 
knelt with us at the altar through three-score 
years and ten, yet must we not swerve from 
the straight path of logic the millionth part of 
a point, or every step will but lead us farther 
away. 

The only reason that all men do not reach 
the same conclusion is that they train their 
logic to subserve some pet idea, instead of 
letting it take its own pure logical path. We 
can all agree upon the foundation facts as a 
starting point ; but we are apt to fly the track 
when we discover that it doesn't lead to " our 
meetin'-house." 

Well, if there is but one universe, and if 
there could by no possibility be more than one 
universe, as claimed in our first proposition, 
and if every law of that one universe must be 
in harmony with every other law of that one 
universe as claimed in our two subsequent 
propositions, it follows that if we find one 
single law that is absolutely necessary to that 



I 2 6 THE A BS OL U TE NECESSITIES . 

one universe we have found a law with which 
all other laws mitst work in harmony. 

We are still agreed. 

Now I affirm that the law of development 
is one of those laws. Don't anticipate ! 

Let us see if we can find that law in exist- 
ence, and then let us see if it is one of the pri- 
mary laws, or fundamental laws ; or, in other 
words, one of the laws absolutely necessary to 
existence. If we find that it is, we will have 
found a law with which all other laws viiist 
work in harmony. 

We will seek, first, in the world of matter. 
We will take a grain of corn. 

In the order of its being, corn must proceed 
from the germ of life that is in the grain ; 
must receive nutrition from the earth, and 
warmth from the sun's rays, before it can burst 
its shell ; these are the first operations that 
link it to the earth, and link it to solar heat. 
Then it leaps up from the earth, and is em- 
braced by the arms of the light, and kissed by 
the zephyrs of morning, to be received, amid 
the perfume of grasses and the song of 



THE LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 



127 



flowers, upon the loving breast of the glori- 
ous day. Thus is it taken into fellowship, 
and thus does it become a part of the world ; 
thus is it allied to the physical universe, and 
thus is it put in possession of its identity. 
This is the law of its being, which, we shall 
find, is in harmony with the laws of all phys- 
ical beinor. 

But, at this point, the question arises. Why 
this arbitrary law, this g7^adzial "process} Why 
could it not have been different, so that other 
lawsshould.be different in conformity to it? 
This would, no doubt, be Mr. Ingersoll's 
inquiry, were he here. Why ? Because any- 
thing else were impossible ! This is another 
one of the absolute necessities. I think we 
can demonstrate this. 

Suppose I wish to bring my hands together 
— they are now some distance apart — I bring 
them together ; it was a gradual movement, 
requiring a full second of time. Suppose I 
bring them_ together with the greatest possible 
speed ; it was a less gradual movement than 
before, but gradual, nevertheless. 



128 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

The electric flash of the Hghtning is ven' 
quick ; it seems to cleave the air in an in- 
stant ; but it is a o-radual movement. The 
first strata of air are pierced before the 
second, and the second betore the third, and 
the first stratum, or wave of the first strata, 
of air is divided before the second wave of 
the first strata is divided. 

Now, in order that the erand harmony of 
the universe should be maintained, it was 
necessary that there should be a relationship, 
or fellowship, of all things, animate and inani- 
mate. And so if we take up the orders of the 
lower animals, we find them closely allied to 
the little orrain of corn. We find similar and 
harmonious laws applying to them that apply 
to vegetable life. We find them proceeding 
from a germ, and by a gradual inovemeitt un- 
dergoing the process of development. And 
we find them linked to the physical universe, 
not only by the laws by which they have 
reached the full stature of maturity, but by 
the very composition of their nerves and 
fibers and tissues. All this was necessary if 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF EXISTENCE. \ 29 

the grand harmony of the universe be main- 
tained. 

Let us follow the logical path a little far- 
ther. 

Now, if there is but one, and if there could 
by no possibility be more than one, universe, 
and if there can be but one set of laws for the 
one universe, and if those laws must work in 
perfect harmony, it follows that the only^^j-- 
sibility of existence must be in the one uni- 
verse, since there is no other ; and every ex- 
istence in the one universe must be subject 
to the one set of lazvs in the one universe, 
and every law in the one universe must be 
in perfect harmony with every other law in 
the one universe. 

Well, if the only possibility of existence is in 
the one universe, it follows that the existence 
of 77ia7i must be in the 07te universe ; and since 
there can be but 07te set of laws in the one 
universe, it follows that man must be subject 
to that one set of laws ; and since every law 
in the one universe must work in perfect har- 
mony with every other law in the one universe, 



130 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

it follows that the law of man's physical being 
must be in harmony with all other laws of 
physical being. And so we find man, as in the 
case of the vegetables, and the different orders 
of animals, linked to the physical universe, not 
only by the laws by which he has reached the 
full stature of maturity, but by the very com- 
position of his body. All this was necessary 
to preserve the sublime harmony of the uni- 
verse. 

We come now to speak of man's immortal 
part, his spiritual nature ; for this, too, must be 
a part of the grand harmony of all things. 

What is the scientific bed-rock ? Why, that 
there are but two things in the universe — 
matter and jnind. What does science tell us 
that man is composed of .^ Matter and mind. 
What does the Bible tell us that man is com- 
posed of? " Dust of the earth," or matter, and 
"breath of life," or mind. Man, then, becomes 
the great connecting link between matter and 
God. Of all things, man alone is composed 
of the two materials — matter and mind ; so if 
there were such a condition as a double neces- 



SOUL, MIND AND THOUGHT. 13 I 

sity, we should say that it becomes doubly 
necessary that man should be in perfect har- 
mony with the universe, should we not, since 
he occupies the relation he does to both ele- 
ments of the universe ? 

Let us see if we cannot demonstrate that 
man not only is, but that the law of spiritual 
existence demands, nay, makes it the con- 
dition of, the absolute necessity to his being, 
that he be in perfect harmony with this law 
of development. 

Now, if we show that there are necessities 
to thought, it follows that we have shown 
necessities to mind. 

So, if we find that the law absolutely neces- 
sary to thought is the same law which we 
found necessary to matter, i. e., the law of 
development, of gradual movement, we shall 
have found a law as necessary to mind and 
soul. 

(We cannot pause here to discuss the differ- 
ence between mind and soul, but must reserve 
that for another time. In a word, I hold that 
mind is the connecting link between the body 



I 3 2 THE ABSOL UTE NECESSITIES. 

and the soul, and that thought is that extra- 
neous, indefinable something which is com- 
municated by the soul, through the mind, to 
the body.) 

Well, you will admit that, though a thought 
is very quick in its movement (and hence we 
sometimes say, as quick as thought),^ — that a 
thought may not pass through the mind in 
an instant. I think we can realize this when 
we recall our personal experience, wherein it 
has required quite a little while to get some 
thoughts through our minds. Possibly the 
present may be one of those instances. Let 
us try to make it plainer : a thought must 
first enter the brain, and the brain becomes the 
medium through which it is communicated 
to the body, and then the body acts in 
obedience to the thougrht. 

Or, to recall the figure we took from the 
material world, a flash of lightning is very 
quick in its action, but it must cleave the air, 
strata by strata ; the stratum or wave that 
is nearest it must always be pierced first, 
before it can reach the second wave, and it is 



THE HARMON I' OF THE UNIVERSE. \ i^i^ 

just so with a thought ; it must enter the 
first wave of mind, if you will permit the 
figure, before it can enter the second wave 
of mind, and the second before it can enter 
the third, and so on till it has passed through 
the mind. 

This illustration serves us in understand- 
ing that the law is universal, and applies to 
small thoughts as well as great ; and that 
the development of a thought is the process 
of a movement to an idea, or that thought 
is a process of development, and conse- 
quently subject to the law of development. 
Therefore the law of development is abso- 
lutely necessary to thought, and if to thought, 
to mind and soul. 

What, then, is the deduction? — it is very 
plain, and it is very sttre, — why, this : 

The condition of man's being, the absolute 
necessity to man's being, demands that he be 
in perfect harmony with the universe — the 
laws and conditions of the universe. And 
since there is and could be but one universe, 
and there is and could be but one set of laws, 



134 ^^^ ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

therefore the laws and conditions to which 
the human race is subject are the 07ily laws 
and conditions, physical and spiritual, by 
which existence in the absolute could be 
made possible. 

From this very simple arrangement of very 
simple truths it follows that man was not 
placed on this earth by the caprice of a 
Creator, but in harmony with immutable law. 
Immutable, because it were impossible that 
it should be different from just what it is. 
And this is just as sure as that there is and 
could by no possibility be but one universe; 
and that there is and could by no possibility 
be but one set of laws for that one universe ; 
and that there is and could by no possibility 
be but one God of that one universe ! 

Philosophies here center ! Upon this moun^ 
tain top that overlooks the world, this ever- 
lasting rock on which is set the azimuth stair 
of God., lo, we may challenge every school 
of science and of thought, for the co7tception 
of a law of being other than this I It is 
absolutely inconceivable I 



FREE, bW TRAMMELED WILL. 135 

When Mr. Beecher and Mr. Ingersoll fret 
and scold about the slow and plodding 
progress of humanity, they are but fretful 
children, whining of the winter's cold, or 
scolding the bright sunbeams in the sum- 
mer's noon. 

The slow^ and plodding progress of human- 
ity is but the gradual though sure develop- 
ment of man. And when Mr. Beecher and 
Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Thomas Paine, and 
the little army of little philosophical guer- 
rillas that train under them, fret and scold 
because He, whom they call an " omnipotent 
God of love," did not foi^ce knowledge and 
enlightenment upon the human race, instead 
of leavino^ it to the freedom of an untram- 
meled will and its own development, they are 
not less children or less deserving of our pity. 

It was upon the foundation of free, un- 
trammeled will that the superstructure of the 
mind was built. It was through the prin- 
ciple of free tmirainmeled will that Attain- 
ment reached down from her sublime heights 

o 

and clasped the hand of Endeavor. It is 



136 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

by the tallsmanic power oi free, tmtrammeled 
will that man leaps from earth to heaven, 
knocks at its door and is admitted to the 
court of anorels. 

A story is told of a North American Indian 
chief, who stood watching an engine and its 
train of cars as it came rushing into a station 
of the Pacific railroad. An expression of stoic 
dignity set every line of his bronzed features. 
He walked up to the engine and regarded it 
closely. It did not move now. The engineer 
had leaped off the opposite side unobserved 
by the savage, and so no one was about it. 
He watched it to see if it would give any 
signs of life, but it did not move. Presently 
the engineer sprang up to his place ; he pulled 
a bar, and it screamed ; he pulled another bar, 
and it breathed heavily ; he pulled another 
bar, it trembled, it moved ; and as it rushed 
away the Indian turned, and, grunting his 
contempt, strode proudly over the plain. 

A man is a wonderful piece of machinery, 
but it is the freedom of his will that makes 
him a demigod. Man is a wonderful piece of 



THE ADVENT OF CHRIST. 



^2>7 



machinery, but take away from him the free- 
dom of his will and he would be no more 
than that engine that was the contempt of a 



savage. 



This brings us to the advent of Christ. It 
will not be expected that we can, at this time, 
enter into a lengthy discussion of the relation 
of Christ to humanity, or of His pectdiar rela- 
tion to those who accept, believe and obey 
Him. And yet I hold that even these may 
be scientifically demonstrated by axiomatic 
truths and their purest logical deductions. 

We can only, at present, pass through so 
much as becomes, at this point, necessary to 
the immediate question before us. 

It would not do to draw a comparison be- 
tween nations in discussing a subject so cos- 
mical in its character as the one before us, or 
it were easy to show that Christianity and 
Enlightenment go hand in hand. Should I 
compare the nations of earth, I should speak 
of my own America. I should hail her as the 
land beyond all others ! I should crown her 
Queen of Nations ! 



138 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

"My country ! Ob, of thee, 
Sweet land of Liberty, 

Of tbee rd sing; 
Till from tby rocks and rills, 
Tby woods and templed hills. 
Wherever rapture thrills. 

Thy name should ring." 

But, now, our song must not be confined to 
a national soprano, it must be attuned to the 
sublime chorus that is joined wherever man 
is free, wherever woman is pure, wherever 
knowledge is triumphant, wherever virtue is 
rewarded, wherever the chimes of sabbath 
bells are heard, and the children are glad on 
Christmas morn. 

The effect of the Christian system, as seen 
in the enlightenment of the human race, is 
evident to all ; Christianity needs no en- 
comium at my hands. I will only drop in 
one item here, and one which, I think, may 
be clearly demonstrated. It is this : 

As advanced thought is the food necessary 
to the higher development of the mind, so 
is Christianity the food necessary to the 
highest development of the soul ; and as the 
mind must be developed to a certain point 



Wlir IJE DID XOT COME SOONER. 



139 



before it can receive advanced thought, so must 
the soul be developed to a certain point before 
it can receive Christianity. From this it will 
be seen that Christianity, considered from a 
scientific standpoint, is a system of psycho- 
logical development. But considered from a 
theological standpoint, there is a question of 
atoneme7it, which we must leave for another 
time. 

It is sometimes asked: Why was not Christ 
sent into the world at an earlier period ? 
Christ was sent into the world just as soon 
as the human race was ready to receive Him. 
But you will say there were times prior to 
His cominor when the world was farther ad- 
vanced in the arts and sciences than at the 
time He did come. Very true ; but not on 
the stair of i7toral being. Though we may not 
be able to mark the distinction between the 
intellectual and the moral, God is, and He 
did it. 

The enlightened of the human race had 
Moses just as soon as they were ready to re- 
ceive him, and they had the prophets just as 



140 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

soon as they were ready to receive them ; and 
then came John the Baptist, and then Christ, 
in fulfillment of the great law of being. Well, 
what is that law of being ? Why, this : that 
just as fast as humanity is capable of devel- 
opment, just that fast are the means of devel- 
opment given. This is a law as universal as 
the love of God ; it is a law that permeates 
every atom of matter and every condition of 
mind. As fast as the blade of grass requires 
nutrition of the earth it is supplied through 
its roots, and as oft as it thirsts it may drink 
of the dew, and as oft as it calls for the sun- 
beam, as oft does it feel the sunbeam's kiss. 
When a babe is born into the world it re- 
quires the daintiest thoughts, and these are 
supplied through its delicate mind. When 
the babe is grown to a child, it is given the 
birds and the flowers. When the child is a 
maiden, or youth,, it has music, and twilight, 
and stars, and love and siofhs ; and when 
the full stature of manhood and womanhood 
comes, we have thought — we have thought — 
and communion with God ! And these are 



THE LAW OF SACRIFICE. 



141 



inexhaustible ! And these shall endure for- 
ever ! 

And this leads us to another point — the 
Sacrifice of Christ. Why was it necessary 
that He should be sacrificed ? He, the Pure, 
the Immaculate One? 

The answer is simple and plain — In obedi- 
ence to law / the law of the eternal neces- 
sities ! — the law that sits on the throne of 
Jehovah, touches the harp of the universe, and 
attunes the sweet song of the stars ! 

Why, there is nothing that is not subject to 
the law of sacrifice ! The flower that blooms 
in your garden, exhaling its rare perfumes, 
was only produced through sacrifice of earth, 
and air, and sunlight, and dew. The pebble 
that lies in the brooklet, the granite that 
stands by the sea-shore, were only produced 
through sacrifice, and the labor of years and 
years ! And man is produced through sacri- 
fice, and travail, and groans, and is only sus- 
tained through sacrifice of millions and mill- 
ions of atoms, of millions and millions of 
lives ! 



142 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

And when that great, grand work was at 
hand — the higher development and redemp- 
tion of man — no less a sacrifice was de- 
manded than Christ, the Son of God. 

This brings us to the closing thought — 
Miracles. 

We have reached the dangerous pass in 
our logical path ; but let us not falter ! Our 
path is along a narrow ledge, but it is straight 
ahead ; let us not falter now ! It is very nar- 
row, but it is firm, it is sure, it is God's own 
granite, its base is deep in the earth ! It is 
narrow, but it is plain, it stands out clean cut 
through the ether ; let us not falter ! We 
have reached its dizziest height ; as you are 
a man, do not falter ! as you are a man, press 
on ! 

Is not every miracle a violation of law ? 
No ! There never was a miracle in violation 
of law ! God never broke a single law of the 
universe ! What, then is miracle 1 The ex- 
ercise of God^ s i^eserve power, in obedience 
to law. 

What do you mean ? Why, this : Professor 



MIRACLES. 143 

• 

Morse knew the law of electrical currents, and 
the laws of atmosphere, and of light, and of 
heat, and of metals ; and he had the power to 
use these as other people did. But back of 
this he had a reserve power. What was that? 
Why, to manipulate those different laws, and 
without disturbing their harmony, so as to 
produce the telegraph ; and ignorant men 
called that a miracle. 

Well, just so God holds a reserve power. 
This is a quality of Hii omniscience that is 
equal to any emergency. The absolute ne- 
cessity to omniscience is that it be equal to all 
emergencies. God has the power to use all 
the laws of the universe just as we use them, 
but back of this He has a resei^ve power by 
which he can manipulate these, and without 
disturbing their harmony, so as to produce 
miracles. Men are performing miracles every 
day to the extent of that power that their 
limited wisdom contains and holds in reserve 
for emergencies. But as God's wisdom is un- 
limited, His reserve pozver is equal to all emer- 
gencies. 



144 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

Science is fast bringing these things to the 
light of human intelligence. 

What scientists perform, now, every day, 
were declared impossible a few years ago ; 
and what we deem impossible, now, will, no 
doubt, be simple and plain in a few years 
hence. For just as fast as the mind calls for 
food, just that fast is the mind supplied. And 
as oft as the Soul shall call to its God, as oft 
shall its God answer: Here am I. 

Now, the miracles of the Apostles were 
beyond the miracles of Franklin, and Morse, 
and Fulton. Why ? Because they were not 
performed by the Apostles, but by God. 
Theirs was a delegated power, — they wrought 
through pure faith, not knowledge. Christ 
told them, before He went away, that when 
one of these difficult, scientific problems was 
presented, to send it up to Him, and He 
would solve it. And they followed His in- 
structions, and He did solve every problem 
that they sent up to the court of heaven. 
He did not show the figures or the demon- 
stration of how they were done, for they 



GOD'S RESERVE POWER. 



145 



could not have comprehended them, but He 
sent the correct "answer." every time. And 
He is solving problems for us every day. 
We get into trouble and we pray to Him, 
and He helps us out of it. We don't know 
ho7v it is done, but when the load is lifted 
from our hearts we know that it is done. 
And every time this is done, a miracle is 
performed. It may be only a very small 
miracle, sometimes, — small when compared 
to the raising of Lazarus from the tomb, — 
but it is a miracle nevertheless. And when 
we come to put on immortality He will 
solve that problem, and in obedience to law. 

I said, a few moments ago *. 

"Science is fast bringing these things to 
the light of human intelligence." Science is 
doing it — or God is doing it — or both; 
may be, after all, they are but one, if we only 
knew what we were talking about. Science is 
bringing great truths to light — though some 
of the scientists are submitting to the results 
of their own experiments with very ill grace. 

Why, a few years ago the Infidels said that 



146 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

the idea of Christ's miraculous conception 
was so opposed to all reason and law, that it, 
in itself, overthrew the entire Christian phi- 
losophy. 

Well, Huxley and Bain, and a score of 
other scientists and specialists, started out 
to settle the whole question with the micro- 
scope. 

This was their last ditch, and they proposed 
to rout us here. What is the result ? If you 
will turn to the recent ninth edition of the 
" Encyclopedia Britannica," you will find, in 
the article on Biology, by Professor Huxley, 
page 687, these words : 

" Generation by fission and gemmation are 
not confined to the simplest forms of life. 
Both modes are common, not only among 
plants, but among animals of considerable 
complexity." 

Again : 

" Through almost the whole series of living 
beings we find agamo-genesis, or not-sexual 
generation." 

And Bain and the score of others who 



HUXLE2\ BAIN AND LOGIC. 147 



Started out to crtcsh Christianity, indorse 
what Mr. Huxley says here. 

Well, when they found this taw existing 
throughout the vegetable and throughout 
the animal kingdoms, except in the case of 
man, then what did they say .^ 

Why, that what was called the miraculous 
conception of Christ could only have been a 
freak of nature — an accident 1 

Oh, it is a pitiable sight when great men 
are reduced to such straits as this I It is a 
sad commentary on the doctrine of universal 
honesty. "It ]\ist happened so." Things 
doxit happen so m this universe of law. The 
genus of Chance does not preside over this 
little planet — for, if it did, there would be 
no end to the happeitmgs. If it did, Mr. In- 
gersoll might have been Pope Leo XIII, and 
Mr. Beecher might have been less given to 
sensations. 

Now, what is the deduction from this ereat 
truth that the microscope reveals to us,— 
or that God reveals to us through the micro- 
scope, — that the law of agamo-genesis, or not- 



148 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

sexual generation exists ? Why, if the law 
exists, then it must be in harmony with all 
other laws of the universe, as we found a 
while ago ; and if it applies to the vegetables 
and the higher orders of animals, as the 
.scientists have demonstrated, it is in God's 
reserve power that it may be applied to 7nan 
without the infraction of any law of the uni- 
verse. And, therefore, God only used His 
reserve power when He did apply it in the 
miraculous conception of Christ. 

But you will say: In the vegetables, and 
animals below man, this law of not-sexual 
generation invariably produces the same ef- 
fects. Very true, — there can be nothing 
truer than that like causes produce like ef- 
fects. That which became the catise in the 
orders below man was simply the result of 
the exercise of the ordinary power of the law 
as applied to their several species, invariably 
producing the same effects : that which be- 
came the cause in the conception of Christ 
was the result of the exercise of the reserve 
power of God ; and, to conclude logically, 



A HIGHER CONCEPTION OF GOD. \ 49 

we must hold that a like effect could only 
proceed from a like cause, and that, there- 
fore, there has been but 5ne Christ. 

Now, does this idea of the reserve power 
of God, as we have applied it, detract from 
the omnipotence of Deity? Not at all. On 
the contrary, to my mind, it exalts the 
thought of Omnipotence by linking it to 
Omniscience. To my mind, it introduces 
us to a higher, nobler conception of God. 
Why ? Upon the old theory, the laws of 
the universe (of which it is held that God 
was the author and maker) were such 
that it became necessary, in order to meet 
emergencies, that God should break them or 
make new ones. In other words, these laws 
which God made were so imperfect that the 
Deity was constantly putting them through 
a course of repairs. Upon the theory we 
have endeavored to present in this paper, the 
laws of the universe are perfect and equal to 
all emergencies. In our ignorance we may 
understand them only to the extent of finite 
intelligence : in God's wisdom He under- 



150 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

Stands them to the extent of infinite intelli- 
gence — Omniscience. 

I am so constituted that I could not wor- 
ship a God who ruled through imperfect laws. 
If His laws were imperfect I should conclude 
that He must be an imperfect God. The God 
I worship is a pe^^fect God. He is Omnis- 
cient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent. He is 
a perfect God, and He rules through perfect 
laws. 

Now, we must accept one of the two con- 
clusions : Miracles are either wrought in obe- 
dience to law or by the infraction of law. 
No one can take exception to this proposi- 
tion. Well, then, I accept the former upon 
the theory of Reserve Power. Who accepts 
the latter must be met by this Incontroverti- 
ble, scientific fact : The infraction of the least 
possible law of the ^miverse would bring con- 
fusion and universal chaos; since there is 
but one universe, but one set of laws for that 
one universe, and every law in that one uni- 
verse must work in perfect harmony with 
every other law in that one universe; and. 



NOW MEET THE EVIDENCE. 



151 



therefore, every law is dependent upon every 
other law for the continuation of its own ex- 
istence. 

I think it will be conceded that we have 
proven th.^ possibility of what are called mira- 
cles. The Infidels must now meet the evidence 
of the records, which they never have done. 
They have simply set the whole question of 
miracles aside by declaring that they were im- 
possible, as an infraction of law was an impos- 
sibility. But we have found that miracles may 
be wrought without the infraction of law, and, 
as I say, now they must meet the evidence. 

The question has often been asked, why 
God did not send Christ direct from heaven, 
in the full stature of physical and intellectual 
development ; or, in other words, what was 
the necessity of Christ's being born of a 
woman, and that He should rest on the breast 
of a mother, and listen to her gentle lullaby, 
and dally with the sunbeams, as a child, and 
drink in the sweet significance of the flowers ; 
and that he should revel with youth in the 
bird songs and the hymns of the Zephyrs at 



I 5 2 THE ABSOL UTE NECESSITIES. 

eventide ; that He should rise step by step to 
manhood, as every man must on this earth ; 
and that He should die, and be buried, and rise 
again; — was it that He should know our 
condition here ? Yes, but more than this, — 
that He should know it as we know it ! Yes, 
for He knew it as God before : but more 
than this, — that he should learn it as we learn 
it, in obedience to law / Christ was conceived 
through God's 7^eserve power that there should 
be no infraction of law. He was born of 
woman that there should be no infraction of 
law. He passed through all the stages of 
development that there should be no infrac- 
tion of law. He died, was buried, and was 
resurrected that there should be no infraction 
of law. God never did break a law and He 
never will break a law ! Every law of the 
universe is in harmony with the very law of 
God's own being, and to break a law would 
be to break Himself And this is just as 
sure as that there is but one universe, and 
that there is but one God of that one 
universe. 



CHRISTIANITT A SCIENCE: 153 

"The universe is governed by law ! '' says 
Humboldt, and Ingersoll takes up the re- 
frain and cries, " the universe is governed by 
law / " " A second Daniel come to judg- 
ment ! I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me 
that word ! Now, Infidel, I have thee on 
the hip!" 

Christianity is a science, and the most ac- 
curate of all the sciences. It is the founda- 
tion of the purest philosophy. It is the 
science of the soul. It is the science by 
which God leads us up to Himself And 
its laws are as sure as the foundations of 
the universe. 

And as sure as good deeds will be rewarded, 
just that sure must evil deeds be punished; 
for this is the law ^/"existence ; the law neces- 
sary to existence ; the law by which existence 
'is made possible ; the only law by which ex- 
istence could be made possible ; — it is the law 
of the Absolute Necessities. 

And the Bible is the one book that con- 
tains that part of that law which pertains to 
the soul ; the one indestructible, immutable 



154 2^^^ ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 

temple that was built by God to contain the 
Sacred Treasures. 

Let the storms of Infidelity rage, though 
they be ever so loud ! Let thoughtless 
youth and decaying old age sport as oft as 
they may with the perilous winds ! The storm 
shall roll on and be lost in the night, but the 
temple shall stand as before ! 

Be ye not deceived, for our Lord is not 
mocked ! 

The storm shall roll on and be lost in the 
night, and the night it shall pass, and then 
Cometh the morn and the light ! and then we 
shall see, and shall kitow, and our voices shall 
sing a sweet song, attuned to the song of the 
stars ! We shall join the grand chorus of 
worlds ! 

A chorus that began with the faint muffled 
purl of nebulae — was touched to measure, 
by His voice who said, " Let there be 
light!" then joined by the resonant waves 
of the deep ; and when the waters were to- 
gether drawn, by cascade and rill, brook, river 
and sea ! 



THE CHORUS OF THE UNIVERSE. 155 

A chorus that caught up the milhon- 
voiced rhythm, the first sweet song of nature, 
and the first wild rhapsody of universal life ! 

A chorus whose reverberations melt into 
oneness the harmonious cycles of the past, 
and in whose echoes every moment finds a 
perfect register ! 

A chorus that now joins the melodious 
voices of every sylvan bower and glen ! of 
every bright, sun-kissed floral vale ! of the 
vast fields, rich with their golden grain ! of 
vaster plains run wild in liberty ! aye, of the 
very deserts whose bright sands reflect the 
marvelous music of the sunbeams ! 

A chorus that unites both hemispheres, 
whose mountains echo, and whose rivers bear, 
the Illimitable, grand refrain ! 

A chorus that leaps Into the clouds I grasps 
the thunder ! sweeps through the corridors of 
the universe ! rises Into the translucent 
ether! mounts the azimuth stair of the In- 
finite, and rests at last at the very throne of 
the Eternal God ! 



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